It was a beautiful morning with a nice orange glow in the air. The fog was thick, but you never know when it will lift a little and give you beautiful light. So I stuck with it. I was here to check on a nest of Herons that I had been watching since last week. I don’t know what exactly happened but when I got here last week, the nest was gone. And so were the birds! I finally found what was left of the nest, sitting in a foot of water at the bottom of the tree that they used to live in. And eventually I was able to spot the 3 little ones, huddled on a small log out in the middle of the pond. It appears that the nest collapsed with the chicks in it and fell straight down to the pond. Fortunately the young ones were big enough to flap their wings and hopefully break their fall a little. And also fortunately, the parents were feeding them on that log. A week ago one of the chicks tried to make it to another log but he crash landed in the water! He managed to swim (sort of) back to the log but he didn’t look happy!
So as the sun slowly came up and I could begin to see I noticed that there was only one chick left. I don’t know what happened to the other two, but I’m going to be optimistic and say they were grown enough to fly away under their own power.
All by himself….
So I was very interested to see how this last chick was dealing with being alone on the log and it didn’t take long to find out. He walked right up to the top of the log, thought about it for a minute, and then took off! I was really hoping he wouldn’t crash land like he did last week. He wasn’t graceful but he managed to land without any issues.
Look Ma, all by myself!!!
He hung out there for about half an hour trying to catch some breakfast, because neither of the parents had come to feed him yet.
Contemplating his future???
I wish there was a better ending to this story. And I guess there is, but I didn’t get a picture of it. Just as I was distracted by a family of Wood ducks, this guy decides he’s going to take off and try to fly again! And this time he didn’t stop!! The last that I saw of him, he was about 300 yards down the pond, gliding gracefully to a landing. I was so glad to see that he (or she) had made it to adulthood, even though the deck was stacked against him. Mother Nature can be a cruel, cold-hearted bitch sometimes, so I was glad to see them beat the odds. And the photography is nothing exceptional, but it’s the story that counts here. And I’m sure that I will remember this story for a long time…… thanks for looking!!!!
