The Birds of Barnegat

What is that?  Some kind of alien?

Oh, thanks for turning your head!  It is a bird.  Still too far away to tell what you are but I have an idea.

On our way home the next day, passing by the same area but further down, HWNSNBP asks me if I saw the bird in the opening.   Usually we only see white birds here and there wasn't any flash of white so I said no.  He smiles and turns the car around.

I can barely make it out against the reeds, but yes, there it was, the Great Blue Heron.  Most likely the same one that I saw the night before.  I grabbed my camera and jumped out of the truck and approached cautiously.

He saw me, but he tolerated me and even looked like he was posing for me.

From big we go to very small.  Waiting for the sun to set in the hopes of getting some good pictures I glanced over at our neighbors' hummingbird feed and was treated to a charm of hummingbirds. There were at least three and maybe four.  They are so fast and flit around so much it was hard to keep track at times.

I am so glad that I asked HWNSNBP to create screens on the back porch that open for two reasons now.  One - it enables me to take shots of the sunsets without having the screen fabric to deal with, and now two - I can lean over to see the hummingbirds who seem to feed at the same time as the sunsets.  

Periodically they would take a break either in the brush or a nearby tree.  

The next morning I woke up to a bird party - hundreds of them whooping it up!

I took a short bike ride and found a lone swan resting along the waterway.  

Try to find the hummers in the next two pictures.

All these lovelies within a week!