Bill Anderson's story about the floating Great Blue Heron reminded me that I had intended to post about this.

Last Sunday (1/9), we watched an American Bittern swim across a slough in Ridgefield NWR. It emerged from tall, dense grass on the other side and swam steadily across the 25-30-foot-wide channel in plain sight, then disappeared into the tall grass on our side. It swam low in the water, with neck retracted and with no head-bobbing motions like some swimming birds make, and totally puzzled me when I first saw it. If I had been somewhere in the tropics, my first thought would have been something like "sungrebe." I couldn't get the camera on it fast enough, darn it.
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Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net