I was off for a couple of weeks over Christmas break at the end of 2009 and spent nearly every day at Ridgefield. That hadn’t been my plan, I hoped to do some hiking in the Columbia River Gorge, but each day at the refuge brought something new and I was always curious to see what the next new thing would be.
This day’s surprise came after I had settled in for a while to watch a young heron hunt in a meadow. It suddenly dropped to the earth and lay prone on the ground, I didn’t understand why until I looked up and saw two adult herons flying nearby. The young heron won this round of hide-and-seek as the adults left it alone and it resumed the hunt, but a while later one of the adults did come back and chase it away.