When I went hiking at Payne’s Prairie State Park, I decided to go down to Lake Wauberg for the sunset. They have a nice boat ramp there and it was completely deserted by people, so I settled in to watch the sunset. For the first part of the sunset I was totally alone except for a few dragonflies buzzing around over the water hunting insects. It was incredibly peaceful. Shortly before the sun dipped below the horizon there was a ruckus in the woods behind me and a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) flew over me and perched on a dead limb that was hanging out over the water. It was already too dark and what light there was came from the wrong direction to photograph the bird in detail, but it was perfect for a silhouette. I waited until the bird got itself pretty well settled and slowly moved around to where I had a nice shot between the hanging bits of Spanish moss. The heron didn’t seem to care about me at all, and in fact except that several times it moved around to preen itself, I might have thought it was already asleep. The quiet peacefulness and beauty of this magnificent bird just added to the calm of this special evening.