Egret visits the garden

Our garden spreads gloriously beneath my office window. Thanks to the mild Northern California weather and George’s green thumbs, I always have orchids and other blooming plants to admire. The garden also attracts a diverse family of critters; hummingbirds, scrub jays and squirrels are our most common visitors for meals and shelter. Once in a great while more exotic friends drop by, and this week I’ve been entranced by the Great White Egret that first flashed by my window on Wednesday to settle onto the roof next door. For two days I stalked it with my camera, as it stalked its prey – gazing intently from neighbors’ roofs and trees into the creek behind us, the pond next door (George’s fingers crossed that our deep garden pond will protect our fish), and searching the thicket of foliage for mice or gophers.

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Read my earlier posts about visits from Great Blue Herons!

• March 2012: Great Blue Heron visits the garden
• July 2013: Great Blue Heron visits the garden 2
• April 2014: Great Blue Heron returns

Great Blue Heron Returns

With the roof of our garden room just below my office window I’m used to visits from crows and scrub jays using it as a landing strip, or squirrels climbing in search of food. Daisy spends her days camped out on a perch she cleared on my crafts bench to watch the neighbors’ hens and other critters through the window. Imagine Daisy’s excitement when this bird-much-larger-than the usual crow cruised right past her to land on the garden room roof!

Great Blues are the largest heron, adults can stand four feet tall. It stayed there surveying our pond long enough for me call to George (in my excitement I said it was an egret) and to grab my camera for several photos.

Great Blue Herons have patches on their shoulder of varying colors; I was close enough to get an adequate photo of this one’s “epaulets” of very dark and reddish feathers.

And then away it flew … until next time!

If you want to see my blog posts about our other GBH visits, click here to see the first, which happened in March 2012 and the second, which was last July.