First time!

It was a hot, gray day today. The kind of close, sultry day that just cries out for a thunderstorm to break the heat, but cries out in vain - although it has just started raining now, three and half hours later. I was walking towards the pond when I spotted a heron beyond the small willow. I thought it was a green heron - I saw one last week, getting some not very good photos of him. (One of those is below...)

But, as you have probably guessed, it wasn't. Nor was it the great blue who hangs around the pond (a shot of him below, too). I knew that as soon as I got a good look. It wasn't anything I've seen before - not just around here, but ever, except in my sister's photos from Florida. It was a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, my first, and a bird I didn't even know we had around here (the guide says we do, though in the coastal areas, which we're just a bit inland to be, I'd have thought. But here he is!).