As I
walked past the town fields this morning just after sunrise amid nearly perfect
stillness, I heard the slow “whoosh whoosh” sound before I spotted it.
Coming
in low and traveling east from the direction of Anna Maria, a long blue heron
flew overhead heading toward somewhere unknown.
For
just a moment, as I looked upward so that only sky and trees and the passing
heron were in my vision, I could easily imagine some Jurassic scene, and the
lone witness to this prehistoric bird silently, save for the “woosh” of its
wings flying by.
The
heron evokes this sense of ancient creature, with its habit of flight and
occasional guttural squawk suggesting some pterodactyl in hunt.
I see
the herons now and again in summer, usually wading near the sore of the pond,
silently and patiently hunting for some small fish or errant crawfish. They are
elegant in water, albeit somewhat unsettling, as they cautiously walk the
shoreline, stepping with slow and deliberate intent, all the while looking with
their penetrating gaze.
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