Admiring a Great Blue Heron

I was admiring this photo of a great blue heron and its shadow when I remembered the poem below. 

Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond  -- by Mary Oliver

So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or last time,
I take a deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself --
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

Click on the photos to enlarge. 

Friendly English Herons

Here are a few more things I saw while birdwatching in Kensington Gardens in London this past summer.

The horses on the carousel had names. One was called Perrin. 

Some of the pigeons were common wood pigeons, Columba palumbus -- big pigeons with bold white neck patches. 

The park's great blue herons, Ardea herodias, were uncharacteristically friendly. At home, I usually see great blue herons hunting alone in marshes, often, like this one, in litter-strewn marshes. Click to enlarge. 

But in Kensington Gardens there were several great blue herons among the hordes of swans, geese, and ducks soliciting handouts of food from passing humans. I had never seen a great blue heron do that before (although I have seen a flock of white ibis go from door to door for snacks in suburban backyards in Florida).