For the past two weeks or so, this beautiful bird has been hanging out around our pond. Usually, as soon as he saw movement from us, he’d fly off. Yesterday, however, I was heading down to the other side of the pond to look for mulberries when I glanced up and saw his big neck stretched out. I thought it was one of the geese (they’re a similar shade of gray, though without the blue hints) but then realized, hey, that’s that crane thing. I backed up slowly and went to get my dad and the camcorder. We recorded that sucker and got really close to him. He was extremely calm and stayed there.

Today, that sucker came right up in our garden while we were all sitting around, talking and eating burgers that my brother had grilled. He was really close to us and didn’t seem bothered. I ran to get the camcorder again but a couple of dorky peacocks scared him off when they ran at him. He flew down to the pond and stayed there.

I looked up photos of herons, cranes, and snipes online, trying to figure out what he might be. As near as I can tell, I think that beauty is a great blue heron.