A Great Egret feeds in the shallow waters of Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve.

Too beautiful a day to spend indoors yet not motivated enough to ride our bicycles, we took a trip by car instead. This time we traveled to the Sheldon Marsh wildlife area, just west of Huron, Ohio. It’s a spit of land that juts out into Lake Erie and, as such, is a seasonal way station for migrating birds making north-south lake transits. We saw few birds today but the few we saw offered a big surprise. I was pretty sure the large wading birds native to this area –Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons– had headed south; I’d seen none in weeks. Today we were rewarded with sightings and photo-ops involving likely three Great Blues and two Great Egrets all within a short walk of the roadway. I was a bit disappointed that the majority of my “grab shots” of herons in flight were in poor focus; they looked so good in the viewfinder. A couple of images, however, nearly made up for the bad ones. Many other nature scenes from Sheldon Marsh and nearby Old Woman Creek were also very beautiful. The ODNR’s visitor center at Old Woman Creek, by the way, is quite impressive. Photography aside, simply seeing great Lake Erie again and being out in the fresh air and sunshine of a fine autumn day were wonderful rewards in themselves.

Surprise! A Great Blue Heron flies directly overhead after rising unexpectedly over a line of trees.