{"id":41961,"date":"2026-06-29T15:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41961"},"modified":"2026-06-29T15:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:03:09","slug":"for-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/06\/for-once\/","title":{"rendered":"For once"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sleep schedule is quite whack right now, so when I say I was doing something, “early in the morning,” that means for me<\/em>, translating to midmorning for most people. So, early in the morning, I looked out back and spotted one of the green herons (Butorides virescens<\/em>) right down at the pond edge. We’ve had a couple sticking around for a while now, but virtually every time I’ve been aware of them, it’s when they’re flying off venting an alarm call, or chasing one another – I get the impression we have one resident that fiercely protects its territory from another frequent interloper. This time, however, I knew right where it was and had the long lens handy.<\/p>\n

My allergies were acting up last night [even earlier this morning], resulting in dry eyes that will often give me problems sleeping, so I’d lubricated them before going to bed. Since they remained dry, I was having a hard time clearing said lubricant from them in the morning, and my view through the camera was variable but overall poor. I had to trust in autofocus, and I was quite skeptical about this as the heron was stalking among tall weeds that I felt sure the AF would snag instead. However, I was pleasantly surprised:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"green
Can’t complain about that, really. I’d slipped out onto the deck and was moving when the heron didn’t seem to be looking in my direction, though I was still pretty far off. I snapped far too many frames, tweaking focus by hand or forcing the camera to refocus in the hopes I’d get something<\/em> useful, but it did pretty well overall.<\/p>\n

\"green
One of these days I’ll be equipped to snag video, but the tripod will have to already be set up. So for now, I can tell you that most herons seem to stalk like cartoon characters walking on tiptoe, that elaborate, extend-one-foot-well-out-ahead-and-then-pitch-the-body-to-catch-up-with-hands-held-limply-as-if-the-restroom-ran-out-of-paper-towels routine, though they never have an orchestral soundtrack to creep to.<\/p>\n

As the heron worked the pond edge, it nicely posed alongside an unrealistically-painted metal cousin.<\/p>\n

\"green
Ironically, today is another holiday, Trust In Technology Day<\/strong>, or TITD. I had intended to ignore it entirely, since I don’t (trust in technology, or at least, not very much,) but I kinda had to this morning, and it paid off, so make of that what you will. Still not gonna upload any damn thing to The Cloud, though…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sleep schedule is quite whack right now, so when I say I was doing something, “early in the morning,” that means for me, translating to midmorning for most people. So, early in the morning, I looked out back and spotted one of the green herons (Butorides virescens) right down at the pond edge. We’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[446,8758,445,8757],"class_list":["post-41961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-butorides-virescens","tag-forced-to-observe-titd","tag-green-heron","tag-trust-in-technology-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41968,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41961\/revisions\/41968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}