Tame herons, surely not….

Having been stymied last night as the clear sky that the meteorological office had firmly forecast all week for Thursday night failed to make an appearance (which kiboshed my plans for a star trail image), today I had photographs in abundance to blip. It all started with an afternoon walk beside the river, Bielwater with the dogs. as we turned the corner there was a heron perched on top of the bridge over the river. After calling the dogs back and rifling through rucksack to get out my camera with a telephoto attached, I noticed another dog walker was approaching from the other direction who was quite likely to cross over the bridge so I got a few shots in quickly before this happened. The heron flew off but landed about ten metres further up the river and perched on the path at the side of the river. Cautiously I approached the bridge with the dogs and was really surprised that the heron did not fly off so I was able to get some really close images and then gently approached a little nearer to catch the bird in flight. which gave me some lovely feather detail. My previous experience of herons has been that they are wary  of humans and even more so dogs. 

I then moved on to greater challenges as there were swifts flying over the surface of Seafield Pond. Needless to say I was less successful in my attempt to catch them in flight, though I did get about one sharp image in about fifty shots.

I have flipped some of the images so as to produce a more balanced. montage. Definitely worth seeing large