Great Blue herons

This morning I went canoeing in the Mississippi backwaters near Red Wing with Bruce Ause. We wound our way through trees and downed logs to look at several Great Blue Heron nests and watch the birds fly in and out. We also saw several eagles, but the highlight of the trip was to come up on a pair of Sandhill Cranes that had built their nest on a small island. Bruce saw them first, and it took me a minutes for my eyes to adjust to see them, blended in perfectly with the background. We were lucky to see them, and they topped off a perfect morning of paddling in Minnesota.