Herons and other outdoor creatures

Here are several photos from my birdwalk on Onion Creek yesterday. With a certain amount of skulking, I got close to a snowy egret and a green heron.

Snowy Egret, hunting


It makes its move


Comes up empy, but dripping


This green heron did not want its picture taken, so it skulked away from me as fast as I skulked toward it.


Here is the same green heron, neck extended. Hardly seems like the same guy.


The rest of my birdwalk was enjoyable, but hot, and most birds were quiet and silent in the summer heat. As I walked back to my car, I passed a lady who had a very small scruffy mongrel dog with her which looked like a toilet brush with teeth, which decided as I passed to protect its mistress from whatever danger I represented, and which hurtled out growling and snarling fiercely till it hit the end of the leash and snapped back a couple of feet, at which point it continued with a slightly choked off version of the snarling and growling as it strugged at the end of the leash, saying, (translated loosely from dog language, as best I understand it) "kill, kill!"
Meanwhile the woman was saying, in a soothing and cooing voice, "Fluffy, be nice! _Fluffy_! Be _nice_!"
Fluffy was having no part of nice, and continued to scrabble as it was dragged away on the leash, strangling itself to get at me as we went our separate ways.