I was looking through old picture’s the other day, and I came across this picture of a Blue Heron, from November 2010. I remember that day, the blue heron and I were playing hide and seek, which is normal heron behavior. When I would get within 50 yards (ca. 46 meters) of the bird in my kayak, the bird would fly further down the creek. This goes on for a while until the bird realizes it can fly away from the creek, not just up and down the creek.
The bird and I played this game a few times, and a decided on a new tactic. Since the bird would fly when I switched from paddle to camera, I decided to get going as fast as I could and switch to the camera much further away. This way, I could coast up on the bird hidden behind the camera. Luckily, that worked and is how I got this shot. After that, the bird had enough of the shenanigans and took off into the marsh.
That was 12 years and 3 cameras ago, I looked art the details in the metadata, the picture was shot on my Nikon D90, my first “real” digital camera. I love the camera and still use it occasionally to this day.