A great Great Blue
Great blue landing
With the cold continuing to hold sway, many of the ice-free spots in the millpond now wear a skim-coat of ice. I'm not sure it's thick enough yet to support so much as a duck, let alone a deer, an angler... or a Great Blue Heron. I've seen this bird—it's hard to tell the males from the females—every morning for the past several days, and the heron certainly hasn't wanted to try its luck on the ice. Rather, it's flown in, searched the pond edges for a spot fronting a stretch of open water, then settled in, motionless, to wait for anything edible, from fish to overwintering bullfrog tadpoles, to swim within striking distance of its lightning fast beak. The end is usually quick, and the Great Blue lives to fly another day.