PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Great Blue Heron

I recently picked up a good book called The Big Year. I had been notified of its existence when the Cornel Lab of Ornithology sent me a newsletter about the new movie that had been released with the same name. It's about birders. A birder isn't a bird-watcher, per-say. I used to think I qualified as a bird-watcher, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe a mild bird-watcher. Anyways, a birder is someone who takes seeing birds very, very seriously. In The Big Year, which is not a novel, the featured men are literally competing to see more birds than the other. They aren't studying the birds. They just see them, check 'em of their list, and move on to the next bird. Lists of 600+ birds on a list for a single year are not uncommon. It's amazing that someone could be so obsessed about it, but I respect that. In fact, I think I'm going to start my own life list this January (we shall see about that). The photo above, anyways, is of Ardea herodias, the great blue heron. It was taken in Big Lagoon State Park near Pensacola, Florida on September 14, 2013.