Photographing great blue herons became a serious project for me beginning in the fall of 2007. Frequently, I saw two herons fishing (at a distance from one another) at Green Lake in Seattle when I was there for early morning runs. It gradually came to me that I'd rather photograph the herons than run, so I brought my camera and walked around the lake several times a week, looking for the herons. Sometimes, the herons weren't there, so I photographed coots and ducks and cormorants and the occasional eagle instead.

It happens that great blue herons live in the Seattle metropolitan area year-round, and a friend told me about the heronry in Magnolia, near the locks. I went for the first time to see the nests of the heronry in December, 2007, when they weren't yet occupied for the new season. Then it became a project to watch for the arrival of the herons at the heronry in the next couple of months and to read about the habits and life cycle of these particular birds, even as I continued to watch the two regular hunters I knew about at Green Lake.

When the herons congregated at the Kiwanis Ravine heronry in Magnolia in the spring of 2008, I was waiting for them. The photographs in the Gallery of this Web site are the result of my observations of the herons in the Kiwanis Ravine, at Green Lake, at the locks, and also, of my visit to a heronry in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where I grew up.  In 2009, I continue my observations of the heron rituals at Kiwanis Ravine.