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After friends pointed out an eagle's nest near my former South Carolina home, I joined them in following its progress for about 15 years. Two mornings per week, I would paddle a couple miles, often against the tide to park my kayak in the marsh and feed bugs, as I (often we) awaited action in or near the nest. I continue to photograph eagles here in the Wet Mountain Valley of Colorado and as I travel.

When my father first showed me the salt marsh to which he'd retired, I was drawn immediately to the stark white of the tall egrets quietly waiting for lunch to flow by on a dropping or rising tide. They flashed and preened their white feathers against dark oak leaves while roosting during the high tide. For spring mating season, I learned, they grow wonderfully elaborate tail feathers that almost led to their extinction more than a century back, when fashionable women coveted those feathers for hats and boas. My father taught me to quickly distinguish young little blue herons from smaller snowy egrets by the egrets' yellow "boots." Young little blue herons, which begin their lives as white, do not have the boots. Egrets may have been my most common photographic subject for two decades. And I must admit I miss them (aside from an occasional sighting of a common egret) here in the High Country.

As I explored life on a salt marsh, I came to know many a heron, beginning with great blues. They allowed me to sit with them as they patiently hunted. I learned their different molts. I awoke at night to squawks in the oaks near my windows. After years, I finally found my way into the lives of their smaller and secretive cousins, especially the little blue, tricolored and little green herons. And then the wood storks, threatened in Florida and moving to our river, slowly showed me their odd fishing methods in which they wait for a creature to touch their probing beak and seize it with the fastest reaction time known in nature.

I never set out to be a wildlife photographer. But my sense of place brought me to marshes, swamps, high mountain valleys and even to the prairie. Then the creatures drew me in, teaching me patience, grace and mindfulness as they showed me their worlds.