Blue Heron Sticks the Landing
Going through photos, making edits, tagging and saving them in various locations takes a good chunk of time. There are tools—Lightroom has a new culling feature that is decent—but ultimately, the time-suck of photo editing is just a fact of life. Half the time, I’m looking through a thousand photos for that one crisp shot since these birds never hold still for me. So rude.
I shoot with a mirrorless Canon R6 Mark II and Sigma 150-600 zoom lens so it’s fast but not as fast as some other combinations. Plus, I like to hold my camera and shoot on the go, so I don’t typically use a tripod that might help with shakiness.
Anywho, I found these Great Blue Heron landing shots in a batch of photos I shot last weekend. It’s always fun to sort through a card and think, “When did I shoot this?”
A Great Blue Heron flies over the Louise Hays dam Saturday, February 21, 2026.
On Saturday, I spent hours shooting all the activity on the river. It was a great day. Louise Hays Park and other parts of the river trail were filled with volunteers engaged in recovery and rebuild projects following the July 4 flood. I ran into Crystal Ledesma leading a bird walk for Riverside Nature Center and stopped to chat and join the group as they viewed or photographed several woodpecker species across the river. There was a 5K going on and others who were riding bikes, walking dogs, and flying kites. It was the most people I’ve seen out and about on the river trail since the flood.
I remember photographing the blue heron perched near the pedestrian walk just downstream from the Louise Hays dam but didn’t recall shooting her in flight and the landing featured below. Also, I’m guessing on the “her.” She seemed on the small side but without a male nearby to compare, I can’t be sure. :)
Look at that wide stance. Nothing is knocking her over.
She stuck that landing. A lot of folks noticed her that day. She didn’t seem worried by the attention and spent quite a while in the shallows between the dam and pedestrian walk as people walked nearby.
Even my presence just a few feet away didn’t phase her. Looking at that plumage blowing in the wind.
