The Heron Trifecta...

Saturday morning I pulled off a Heron trifecta in Harrisburg. I have only been photographing birds for a little over a year now so sometimes I am a little slow on local birding. That being said I finally went to a local park in Harrisburg that was said to have nesting pairs of Yellow Crowned Night Herons. I arrived and quickly began to scan the area for the Herons, I was searching trees as I was told that there was numerous nest and that you could not miss them. With all the leaves I never seen a single nest but I did locate on Yellow Crowned feeding alone in the grass. Not knowing if I would get any photos by taking my time getting out of the truck and putting the camera on the tripod I began firing aways from the window with the D90 and the 70-200 f2.8 attached. The second photograph of the heron with the worm was from that encounter. I found a place to pull over and and got the D300 with the 200-400 f4 attached out and set up. He was kind enough to allow me to get a few photographs before flying away (the first photo came from this set up). Two other times I seen the yellow crowned fly by but this area is not open and has many trees so you do not get the chance to see them soon enough to get set up for flying shots.

These birds are considered endangered here in Pa and in New Jersey. Apparently one has been nesting here for years and recently one began nesting in the Lancaster area and just this year on in the York area. I hope to try and photograph them a few more times this season.

The trifecta occurred when I photographed a green heron in a tree at this location and then later in the morning I photographed a Black Crowned Night Heron at Wildwood Lake. All in all it was a good morning for birds.

Don't forget to stop by Shane's blog for a new post today.