Tri-Motored Heron

One of the more skittish birds I try to photograph is the tri-colored heron. Whenever I spot one, they are usually on the wing, trying to get out of camera range. But this fellow was nice enough to pose politely for a few moments atop a dam at Red Bug Slough Preserve in Sarasota.

Other than this birdy, there wasn't too much else to see. Maybe at a different time of year, you'd be more likely to see interesting things. I saw quite a few of the flowers below, which are sort of pretty, and I have no idea what they are called. They seem to sprout up from some sort of grass, and the flowers look almost like nothing more than some bird poop on a long grass stem. But closer examination reveals this not to be the case, as you can see in the detail below.