Herons and Egrets

I've been sketching pictures here, trying to help myself remember the wonderful things we saw in the Wildlife Refuge trails. Ridgefield is almost in Vancouver, Washington -- I always wanted to see the Vancouver that's down here. Sketching a blue heron is becoming easy, we've had such opportunities to sit in the car and study one that's only five or ten or fifteen feet away. The color of the plumes, the dark blue feathering of their bellies... the one that stood its ground even when we had to pull up right to him, and then he arched his wing and snapped his head, and lofted off with Bill calling "He's got a snake, look!"

A lot of the things I try to sketch have an audio of Bill saying something; saying about the white egrets, "I think you'll find there's more than two of them" and then all of them reared up, showing off their blazing white wingspans, and me frantically trying to count. The most amazing sight. And the blue heron right there while we watched the egrets, only yards from my window, motionless, actually motionless for so long that we finally pulled the car on down the road without ever having seen him move.

Wonderful days.