Something to brighten up a rainy day

Today was definitely an uninspiring blip day with heavy rain on and off most of the day. It had stopped raining when I took the dogs for their afternoon walk but was grey and overcast. I had resigned my self to taking photos of raindrops on grasses when all of a sudden I saw this heron. It was actually tucked away underneath the sea wall and had I not poked my head over to look at the pool overflow pipe I probably would have seen it. As it was it took off immediately and I was left with some hazy pictures of the back of a heron flying away and normally that would have been that as the heron normally fly away some distance. But as luck would have it there must have been something really tasty near the outflow pipe and he/she landed just a short way up the beach and began walking back to the outlow. Although I was shooting with the tele-zoom end off my compact, which is not a particularly long lens, he/she was close enough to the sea wall to grab some reasonable shots. I chose this shot because he/she stood out better against the grassy bank than against the sandy shore line but I did notice in my earlier shots just how big their feet are and how ungainly they look when they are walking, a bit like a human walking with flippers on. I love the curly feather at the bottom of his breast, and I am not sure whether this indicates he/she is still a relatively juvenile bird.