The Jamaica Bay wildlife preserve is closer than most New Yorkers think - yet it could be on the moon. Most people I know in this city have never heard of it. Visitors, much less. But it’s really, really close: a hop on the A train to Rockaway Boulevard, then a few stops on a city bus, and you are there. 90 minutes from midtown Manhattan. In early fall, it’s a haven for migratory birds, and on sunny Saturday afternoons, also for photographers. Well, photographer, really: last week I was utterly alone. The subway to the Rockaways had been suspended for the weekend, everybody was out of town for the Columbus Day semi-holiday, and I had the place to myself.

The tide was the lowest I’d ever seen it, and after some putzing around I decided to plop myself down on the wet sand, return some overdue phone calls, and generally just enjoy a most un-New Yorky quiet broken only by the cursed jingle of a Mr Softee truck, carried by the wind from faraway Howard Beach. Heaven, really, except with a few trash bags (not so un-New Yorky maybe, then.)

While I was talking to my father on the phone, catching up on life across the Atlantic, a great blue heron landed to the east of me and casually made its way towards a tidal channel, right in my direction, getting pretty close. “Airone!” I said in Italian, “sorry Dad, got to go!” A photographer himself, he understood. So it was just the two of us now, my great blue heron and I. We ended up sharing the place for a couple of hours, he hopping around on funny airone legs, me sitting stock still. Then the egrets came, then the other herons, and then the gulls, and everybody started feeding like crazy. I ate my trail mix too, and kept shooting all the while.

Bluefish! A local classic.

The white guy is a a great egret, also a fairly common sight around here. There was a snowy egret too, but too far for my 300mm lens. 

The egret found a fish, too - but speared it, rather than catch it in its beak like herons do. 

Fish out of water…

… and in the beak…

… and gulp!

Lunch out of the way, time for some fun. 

Puffing up to scare someone?

The fish certainly weren’t scared. Or maybe they were just trapped in the tidal pools. Funny thing is I never see them. But I don’t have sharp yellow eyes and a sharper beak.

More pas de deux

Birds aren’t the only ones passing through Jamaica Bay. This monarch butterfly stopped briefly before starting off again on her way south. How many more stops before Mexico?