You can see enlarged versions of the pictures in two formats, by clicking the appropriate buttons beneath each.
On our camping trip to Wisconsin in August 2004, we were amazed to see whooping cranes in the stubblefields near the campground. We couldn't get very close before they started squonking, but here's what we could take with the zoom (so, the "high resolution" are pretty small). The last picture is a heron we scared while canoeing.
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Jared and I went canoeing on the summer solstice 2003 and went the wrong way on the Illinois and Michigan Canal and ended up in a large, shallow widening of the river near a wildlife sanctuary. I had spotted an island that I thought would be nice to pull up on for lunch. From afar, it looked like a bunch of detritus had washed up on it, including what looked like Styrofoam. When we got closer, we saw that this small island (several hundred square feet) was covered with nesting herons (at least two different species). They weren't much disturbed by us and we got within about fifteen feet, where I took some of these pictures.
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| First Approach | Closer | ||
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| The first heron we saw, off in the distance | Nests about 80 feet up | Closeup of nests | |||
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