Image NOTES by Rachel Cobb

Charleston
 

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Audubon Swamp Garden
Lunch

A BIG Audubon moment, number two. Beware the images are raw. Not gory just raw, even took me a second to regroup from saying gross to taking pictures. Watching the herons for sometime this one heron seemed intent to get something sooner then later as he went into his stalking stance and slightly sway back and forth, then stretch out and finally pounce. Big splash, and when he came up he had a big frog. The heron suddenly flew up and headed in my direction. I was trying to keep my excitement in check and make sure I was getting the shot.

Once he landed in front of me and paused, I kept shooting to hopefully keep him from being spooked as I moved in closer and changed my angle since I had a tree in the way. Seemed to help he was not bothered by me.

The process was fascinating, he moved to shallow water and kept throwing down the frog, pick it up and throw it down, like tenderizing it. Once it was more flat as you see in the images, he picked it up head first, and down it went, whole, like 6 gulps. Gone.

When it was all done he flew off to a near by tree. It took a few minutes, for the whole process, always nice to be in the right place at the right time and with the camera ready to go.

Charleston
Charleston