This is the second in a series of six shots (I think) of the great egrets we – much to our surprise – encountered at Constitution Gardens on Thursday. We had taken Queenie down there for the car ride and to get a long walk. There weren’t many birds in the lake, definitely not the great blue heron, and we were ready to give up when we spied these two egrets at the far end of the lake. I couldn’t easily walk that far so said I’d hold Queenie if Tim went down there with my camera to get a closer shot of them, when suddenly they took off and landed right in front of us. They must have just been passing through as we’ve never seen them in the gardens in all the years we’ve been going there. After I got some shots of them, they took off, probably never to be seen again.

I’m not going to post these pictures all at once, but I wanted to show how close they came to us. What a treat!

The great egret saga: First sighting (1/6), posted earlier: