How many Herons???

In my last post, I said it would be nice to have another 'Heron Summer' like the one we had two years ago.  Well, yesterday we had kind of a 'Heron Winter'.  I know it's not technically winter according to the calendar (and this is not an April Fool's joke!).  But our area had a winter storm on Sunday afternoon and night.  Some areas in our county got almost a foot of snow.  Luckily, we only got a couple of inches at our house.  Not sure if the weather had anything to do with it, but that night we had herons.  How many herons, you ask?  See how many you can pick out in this photo:

This is a close up of a few of them so you can see what you are looking for:

For quite awhile in the morning, they stayed like that.  Huddled up, trying to keep warm!

But after awhile, the temperature warmed up and it was time to go fishing.

Herons don't always stay perfectly still to fish....

This one was stalking his prey.

Gotcha!

Down it goes!

It was a great heron-watching day!  They were fishing, flying, and besides herons there were Mallards...  

and lots of Wood Ducks.

I counted 12 Wood Ducks altogether (though there aren't that many in this photo).

Speaking of how many.... how many herons did you find in my second photo?  It was easier to count them watching them in person with the binoculars, but here's a photo with each of them circled:

Yep, that would be NINE!  I'm hoping some of them will stay and nest in our swamp again.