More Pictures from the Field
My thoughts in the field:
The Great Blue Heron Rookery

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##SubscriberName##,

I have been visiting a Great Blue Heron Rookery in Northern Illinois for the past few months. Watching the cooperation involved by the adult herons in nest maintenence has been a fascinating experience.
Herons nest in colonies - a community of nests that together form a rookery.

The focus and committment of the work that the two adults together is breathtakingly beautiful to witness. The male flies up from the marsh below to the nest high in a tree & brings a stick to the female, as an offering. She takes the stick from the male and together they place the stick where it needs to go. At the same time that the male has gathered a stick to offer the female for home maintenance, he also carries food with him for the young.

When the ritual of nest maintenance is over and the young have been fed the male leaps off of the nest and flies straight down from the top of his "tree house" back to the shallow marsh water below to carry out again the promise that this life has woven into his spirit -

The croaking sounds that you hear in the video is the sound of the Great Blue Heron.

Elegant and graceful in the way that the Great Blue Heron makes a life - they offer insight into our own Human Nature. As I observe for hours at a time I let go of me and simply live in the present, applauding and celebrating the extraordinary that I see in each second. My eyes explore the grace of each movement, the humor in the clumsy movements of the adolescents not yet fledged, and through my study and observation my own focus makes pictures.

I find anymore that more of my time is spent in being with my surroundings rather than the making of pictures. I seem to know intuitively when it's time to simply "be" and when the time is right to "hold" a moment indefinately still with a picture. - The more time I give to being with Nature, breathing her in, the more I know of this gentle teacher - Nature. ... My intentions are not just to bring her voice back to people but to inspire humans to experience themselves - to know themselves - through Nature.

Yours in Nature,
Kristen