Today I knew that I was going to have to hustle in order to get some pictures before my 3-day seminar, so I quickly finished off some laundry and did a few errands, packed my bag and raced over to the now familiar spot to grab some pictures.

It was cold.

But it turned out to be a great trip, although short.

There will come a day when I will be able to recognize these birds for what they are, but right now, sometimes I’m mystified when I run across birds that are unfamiliar or that don’t fit a particular expectation.

I took pictures of a Green Heron the other day, when I didn’t know what it was…and today I took pictures of another heron.

This heron doesn’t appear to be a green heron, because the legs are way too long; but the coloring is very interesting.

We have so many herons in this area that there are forest preserves named after herons, and housing complexes named after herons.

There sure seem to be a lot of varieties of herons that I knew absolutely nothing about, LOL…

Here he is, at first I thought he was a juvenile green heron, but now I don’t think so when comparing the length of the legs. A young green heron might not have the right coloring yet, but the bird wouldn’t be as tall as this. I get the feeling that he was scrunched down and that his neck would look a lot longer if he stretched it out. Maybe he’s just a juvenile blue heron, but I haven’t seen any pictures of any herons which showed these rainbow hues.

These are just two of the shots I took of this bird, but I took many photos of him; he didn’t move anything but his head. He wasn’t fishing or hunting the way most herons have been over there, which is why I get the impression he’s an immature bird of some type. I got the idea of watermarking from Michelle. (TX Michelle!)

This appears to be a type of box turtle or snapping turtle, I’ll have to research that, too. My son had a collection of turtles at one time, and this one reminds me of those turtles; they were brightly colored, and had stripes on their heads and legs.

This is another cedar waxwing picture; I’m getting them while I can because …I read that they migrate from this area of the country for the winter and my opportunity of getting photos of them is NOW.