There Were No Herons

I promised the kids herons.  There weren't any.

Today was a teacher-only day at school, so we picked the kids up after our Friday morning breakfast and took them on a field trip.  We went to the Black River Riparian Forest and Wetlands, a public nature preserve not far from home.  Tom and I have been there before and in the past it has been a Great Blue Heron rookery, with herons galore and many big nests high up in the trees.

Sadly, the herons had moved to a new nesting sight somewhere.  There were even very few ducks, even though in the past we had seen many varieties.  I guess we were a bit late in the season.

Irene was quite miffed at me over the lack of herons, but I armed each of the kids with a camera, Isaac with my Nikon with zoom lens and Irene with my Canon point and shoot with zoom, and let them go at it.  Almost all of the photos here are taken by them. Later, back at home, they edited them, eliminating bad ones and cropping for best effect.

 I have not yet identified this duck.  I'll work on it. ↓

 The day was saved when we discovered goslings!

 Cedar waxwings were eating berries along the trail.

 We walked to the end of the Springbrook Trail and then doubled back.  There we found the Canada Geese families on the trail, eating the grass along the sides.

 One family had one larger surviving gosling, and the other family had four younger offspring.

 I spied a beautiful wood duck in the stream.

We finished off our field trip with a hike through the Waterworks Gardens, which is an area of filtration ponds from the nearby sewage treatment plant.

We managed to have a good time, even though there were no herons.