Blog Archives
Nah nah nah boo-boo, you can’t catch me: Heron & Dragonfly Redux
Great Blue Heron eye-to-eye with Dragonfly – babsjeheron
“So lovely. There were many dragonflies – tasty – and I love how their wings tickle on my tongue…” said the Great Blue Heron to nobody in particular.
Looking at the Dragonfly perched so enticingly on the tip of the Heron’s bill above, did you wonder if Dragonfly was on the lunch menu that day?
(Spoiler alert.)
See for yourself:
Dragonfly teasing Great Blue Heron – babsjeheron
Is it just me, or did you, too, hear a Dragonfly’s voice sing-songing that childhood playground taunt, “Nah nah nah boo-boo, you can’t catch me?”
And do you think it weird for a Dragonfly to tantalize a much larger Great Blue Heron? Cheeky Dragonfly!
Given the contrast in size of the Heron and Dragonfly, I wonder how many insects it would take to make a nourishing snack? Herons must consider Dragonflies tasty morsels.
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Great Blue Heron fledgling wondering where he put his glasses, erm Dragonfly – babsjeheron
“Now, where did I put my glasses, erm Dragonfly?” the Heron asked of no one in particular, wondering where his memory has gone. Often, I wonder where my own glasses have wandered off to. What about you?
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Dragonfly Hitchhiker on my kayak – babsjeheron
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File this one under silly nonsense just for fun!
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About today’s post: Today’s post is inspired by Denzil’s “Nature Photography Challenge #10: Dragonflies.” One of several earlier versions was produced in response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artist prompt “Weird and Wonderful.”
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Frequent readers may know that I have been nearly blind for many months and so have been largely absent from WordPress blogs. Two days ago, I learned that instead of three retina laser surgeries, I will need only two – one for each eye. I’ll take that news as a win! Scheduling is still delayed, and until then, Patience is the word of the day.
Because of my near-blindness, I’m not able to link in my posts to the various host sites for WP challenges/tags in the way I have always done in the past, but please know that I value the sense of community here, especially among the Lens Artists, Cee Neuner, Debbie Smyth, BeckyB, Denzil, I.J., Restless Jo, Tofino Photography, and more, who all encourage the entire international network of photographers and writers. Sorry that I cannot link directly at this time – this is the best I can do for now.
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I do love a happy ending, and hope my eye surgeon delivers one for the Herons & me! Patience Grasshopper.
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TCAN One-Woman Show Lobby Wall
Great Blue Herons at TCAN Lobby One-Woman Show January & February 2022 – babsjeheron
Once again, the Great Blue Heron diving beneath the water’s surface graced gallery walls.
TCAN One-Woman Show January through February 2022 Lobby Wall With TCAN Sign Reflected; TCAN Stained glass art by Carol Krentzman, framed by Jay Ball
My Great Blue Heron photographs were once again on display on the walls of the lobby and theater in a free one-woman show at the Summer Street Gallery, of The Center for Arts in Natick. It was great to see so many of you there.
Since 2001, the Center for Arts Natick has been housed in the circa 1875 historic Central Fire House, where the Summer Street Gallery provides an opportunity for accomplished visual artists in the region to have their work prominently displayed for TCAN’s diverse and loyal audience.
The Center for Arts Natick believes the arts are essential to a complete human experience and to the creation of a vibrant, healthy community. TCAN serves the Boston MetroWest region by increasing opportunities to experience, participate in, and learn about the arts. To this end, TCAN strives to present arts programs of the highest standard that are available to everyone. TCAN dedicates its resources to providing community access to diverse arts programs, reducing barriers to attendance, and building appreciation through arts education.
If you’re in the Boston or Metro West area, please stop by TCAN to see the wonderful gallery displays of artworks by many talented visual artists, as well as excellent live music performances and stage plays. The gallery is open whenever the box office is open, so please check hours here.
As always, many of my own photos were taken on the waterways of the Charles River watershed.
.
.
.
Natick Center Cultural District logo
Folks, now that some areas have opened back up in a new normal, please consider supporting your local Arts communities – whether music, theater, crafts, visual arts venues, and others. All have been impacted over the past THREE years and they still need your love more than ever.
.
The Natick Center Cultural District is situated in a friendly, classic New England town hosting a vibrant, contemporary fusion of art, culture and business. Click here and here to learn more!
.
.
My brick & mortar presence in Massachusetts dates back to 2009 in several local venues/galleries.
TCAN – The Center for Arts Natick – One-woman photography show through February 2022
.
Natick Town Hall – Current group exhibit thru January 3 2023
.
Five Crows Gallery in Natick – Represented since 2013
.
Audubon Sanctuary
.
Be a fly on the wall! Please CLICK HERE to see the Great Blue Herons gracing the gallery walls.
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.
Remember: Walk softly and carry a long lens.™
May the Muse be with you.™
The Tao of Feathers™
A Patience of Herons™
© 2003-2023 Babsje. (https://babsjeheron.wordpress.com)
Great Blue Heron, Kayaking, TCAN, Five Crows, Natick Center Cultural District, Dragonfly
Great Blue Heron – Not Just Another Pretty Face: Earth Week PSA Redux
Not just another pretty face – Great Blue Heron Territorial Display – babsjeheron
If the Heron can read this, you’re too close.
Great Blue Heron poised in the Charles River – babsjeheron
“… Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves.”
Ray Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder,”
In “A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories“
If the Great Blue Heron can read this, you’re too close. It bears repeating during this Earth Week: If the Great Blue Heron can read this, you’re too close. Every so often going back a full decade on this blog, I feel compelled to caution folks that Herons need their space.
In the past few weeks, I have seen so many photos of Herons that were too close or that had clearly been flushed by photographers. Flushing a Heron is not good, it is a rookie mistake – even if it makes for a dynamic photo. In fact, birding ethics organizations from Audubon to the US Fish & Wildlife Service almost all universally say avoid flushing birds. Don’t get too close.
People who know me know that my motto is “Walk softly and carry a long lens.™” It is important to give wildlife an extra-wide margin of personal space to not endanger them. I take precautions to remain hidden from their view, including use of telephoto lenses, high-power binoculars, and natural-cover hides.
I cannot support the idea of any photographer moving too close to wildlife. Humans can unintentionally endanger the wildlife they wish to photograph. For example, as passionate Eagle blogger and Veterinarian Doc Ellen points out, “People must stay 660 feet from an active bald eagle nest, according to Federal law.” Learn more from Doc Ellen about efforts to protect Bald Eagles CLICK HERE.
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In taking hundreds of thousands of photos over a couple of decades, I can count on two hands the number of times I was within 10 feet of a Heron who could see me. Half of those times happened when I was hidden under a tree canopy and the Heron didn’t see my kayak and dropped down to land literally next to my boat. And one time was because I stepped in to protect the Heron from fishing lines, and the Heron’s response is evident in the lead photo today.
This is a critical time in the life cycle of Great Blue Herons, when the Herons are getting ready to nest and create the next generations. This is the time of year when Herons can frequently be spotted, and when novice birders or photographers put them at risk by getting too close. Interrupt a nesting or feeding adult Great Blue, and the chicks may go without a meal. Interrupt a feeding fledgling could ultimately mean life or death for the bird.
As a photographer, ask yourself:
Did you get that perfect shot, but flushed the fledgling in the process?
How long will your friends and family remember your photo?
How long will the fledgling remember the meal he missed or the calories he wasted fleeing you?
Maybe only that single meal, those much-needed calories were his tipping point between life and death.
The post below was an earlier PSA rant about endangering Herons. Please humor me again during this Earth Day Week.
“… Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves.”
Ray Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder,”
In “A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories“
Great blue herons practicing 24 hours before they fledged.
The sleek kayak had been tugged up into the shrubbery on the hillside just south of the keyhole bridge. No, wait, make that a sleek kayak and a custom canoe nestling there in the bushes. How odd.
I had noticed the same two paddlers the day before, farther north. How could a person not notice their high-end boats and expert-looking water skills?
Fast forward a day, and there were those boats again, cruising the southern waters. The two men beached their custom-made canoe on the tiny nesting island. I quickly paddled my kayak over and explained to them about the great blue heron nest and the eggs that were due to hatch within the next 10 days. They replied, “OK, we’re outta here,” and left right away. Success!
Keyhole tunnel portal to the southern waters.
I should have expected that something was afoot when I noticed a white flag hanging off the promontory southwest of the keyhole tunnel the next morning, it wasn’t there the day before. I should have connected it to the two expert paddlers, but didn’t grasp what it foreshadowed.
The next morning, I was enroute to the secluded shady hide along the western shoreline, thinking to pull in and read a book while munching a bagel for breakfast, when I noticed a man in a red kayak heading for the island. I wanted to warn him off, and so spun my kayak around. As I was about to aim towards him, a red canoe came out of nowhere, making a beeline for the island, the woman in front paddling harder and faster than I’d ever seen in a canoe.
I intercepted them, positioning my kayak in their path and they started to curve around me back towards the island. By this time, the man in the red kayak had meandered around the island and maybe 20 yards to the south, not threatening the island, so I focused on the red canoe and explained to the woman that they needed to steer clear of the island due to the nesting herons and chicks that should be hatching soon. She got the message and she and her partner gave the island and nest a wide birth and paddled in the direction of the east shore. Whew.
Next, I paddled south of the island and to the shady hide on the opposite shore, and turned around to face the island before settling in, when I noticed a green canoe perilously close to the east side of the island, within a foot of the shore, ducking under some tunnel-like branches and then exiting and paddling farther east.
Curious about their odd behavior, I got out the binoculars and saw something hanging from one of the lowest branches on that side of the island. There was a flash of red, and I remembered seeing it Saturday afternoon when I had dissuaded the two men in a canoe from hanging out there – the two who said to me “we’re outta here.” I thought it was red from the baseball cap one of the men was wearing yesterday. But maybe it wasn’t that at all.
By this point, the man in the red kayak had circled the island and was coming around the north side, very close, too close. I paddled up to him and explained about the nesting herons and incipient hatching. He took off his baseball cap, craned his head and neck backwards to look straight up into the trees at the nest, and then back down. He gave me a level gaze and laconically drawled “Well, I need to rest my kayak in a stable spot for a few minutes,” and pulled out a snack and settled in. Aaarrrgh, he was virtually at the base of the nesting tree, his red kayak shining like a beacon that the adult herons couldn’t possibly fail to notice.
I paddled back towards the west because there was now another green canoe heading straight for the island. I paddled alongside and explained to the young woman in front that they needed to steer clear of the island due to the nesting birds, and – to my relief and gratitude – they headed much farther south.
Then, I circled the south side of the island and ducked into the tree tunnel and saw the red thing. There was a plastic ribbon sash circling a low branch, the red ends flapping down about six inches. Suspended from a white cord was a sort of rectangular card with a large number written prominently on it. The cord was wrapped around the neck of the top of a cut-off white plastic milk-bottle with the another number hand-written on it, such that about five inches of the milk-bottle top was suspended mid-air about three feet above the surface of the water. I thought maybe it was a trap for mosquitoes – they sometimes try to detect virus-carrying mosquitoes with traps, but an open-bottomed milk bottle wouldn’t be a very effective trap.
Putting one and one together, I deduced that it was some sort of scavenger hunt.
A scavenger hunt using the nesting island as a way station.
I was, and still am, horrified.
Even though I had explained to the men who placed the scavenger hunt apparatus in the shrubs about the federally protected herons sitting on eggs in a nest on the tiny island, they chose the island as part of their game. Even though I explained about the eggs about to hatch to the man in the red kayak, even though he looked directly up at the heron’s nest, he still chose to park his boat on the island shore for his snack.
I cut down the offending dangling plastic red sash and the milk bottle apparatus, and as I pulled it into the boat I noticed some sort of red plastic fob dangling from the bottom, sort of like a very large clothespin or something strange. I had no idea what it was, probably a weight to keep things from blowing in the wind, and I pulled that into the kayak too, and stashed it all behind the seat back with my sneakers and socks. In that instant, in my own small way, I understood what Greenpeace might feel like.
I then quietly, nonchalantly paddled southeast a bit and circled back to the front of the island. As I was doing this, a silver-haired couple wearing circa 1960 vinyl PFDs proclaiming Boy Scout Troop NNNN was bearing down hard and fast on the island in an ancient silver aluminum canoe. I explained to the woman that they couldn’t approach the island because of the nesting birds and eggs due to hatch and I thought they were paying attention to me, but I was mistaken. They were heading closer and closer as they circled around to the back of the island.
In the meantime, I paddled up to the snacking man in the red kayak still beached on the island, literally to beseech him to leave before the heron abandons the nest. While I was trying to talk to him, the silver canoe came upon me from behind and rear-ended my boat. Outrageous lack of seamanship on a 700-acre body of water. I asked them to get away from the island and again explained about the nest and what would happen if they got too close for too long and the adult herons abandoned the nest.
My heart was in my throat again and I paddled away from the island, heading west. I turned the boat around, and the lunkheads in the silver canoe were still there. I boldly waved my left arm in broad sweeping strokes motioning them all away from the island. And I kept on motioning them away.
The silver canoe then came right up to me and the woman asked me “Did you see the remote?”
I had no idea what she was talking about and so honestly said “no.” It was only after they paddled away that I realized that the red plastic fob on the end of the milk carton string behind my seat back must have been the “remote,” whatever a remote is.
Father great blue heron has fled the nest and watches anxiously from the tall pines.
I paddled to a secluded spot on the northern shoreline of south lake and relocated the milk carton and dangling fob on the branch of a different bush, far enough from the island to not be a concern for the herons, but close enough to their original placement to not make a huge difference in their little game.
As I raised the binoculars, I could tell by then that the adult heron was not in the nest. Would the adult return? All I could do was watch and wait.
I lost track of time, but it seemed an eternity.
I headed west a little bit more, turned around, and there in the sky was the adult, making a nice big circle and a perfect landing on the nesting tree! He quickly got back into position on the nest and hunkered down.
By this point in the afternoon, the silver canoe was gone, the red kayak was a fair distance away, and I needed to head back for the day, and so I turned my kayak towards home.
Just then, a middle-aged woman in a tiny tan kayak with a big black dog wearing it’s own adorable PFD passed by. I remarked about her cuddly first mate and she said he couldn’t wait to get out of the boat.
I then realized that they were going very fast, straight for the island. I called to her and said you can’t go the island, there are nesting herons with chicks due to hatch soon and she replied, “I’m doing an orienting weekend. I need to get to the remote.”
And on she paddled towards the island, as my blood ran cold. I could only imagine the havoc her dog would cause romping about the island floor.
If you’ve been following this blog, you already know that the eggs hatched, the two heron chicks fledged and they have both successfully migrated, fall and spring, and found their way back to their home at the lake. I am in awe of how they did that.
Photographer gets too close to a great blue heron nest while the nestlings are being fed by an adult.
Between mid-June, 2012, when the above story took place, and August 12, 2012, when the herons fledged for good, there were many – too many – instances of human encroachment at the nesting island. The father heron in particular would leave the nest, and watch anxiously from tall pines across the channel.
Whenever I noticed people landing on the island, or venturing too close and jeopardizing the herons’ survival, I’d try to educate them, and often shared my binoculars to let them see the beauty of the herons.
Fellow photographers were often the worst offenders, so eager to get closer and closer to get that “perfect shot” of the baby birds.
What is the cost of people being careless or disrespectful in nature?
If you’re a nature lover, birder, photographer, boater, whatever, take a minute and read Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder,” and imagine that instead of a butterfly, it’s a great blue heron.
And after your next nature outing, how would you answer these:
Did you and your children have a wonderful nature walk, but did the fledgling flush as your toddler squealed and clapped in delight at seeing the pretty birdie?
Did you and your group have a great afternoon orienteering, but did the mother heron veer away while taking fish back to the chicks because you ventured too close to the nest?
Did you and your friends have a fun time waterskiing, but did the father heron abandon his brood when your boat circled the nesting island too close one time too many?
Did you get that perfect shot, but flushed the fledgling in the process?
How long will your friends and family remember your photo? The waterskiing, orienteering, that particular nature walk?
How long will the fledgling remember the meal he missed or the calories he wasted fleeing you?
Maybe only that single meal, those much-needed calories were his tipping point between life and death.
Read “A Sound of Thunder.”
Imagine that instead of a butterfly, it’s a magnificent great blue heron.
Don’t be “that guy.”
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Here are some great resources for birding/photography ethics:
The Jerk – ABA Blog by Ted Lee Eubanks
About the tagline of this post, it’s a bumper sticker I’d love to see:
“If the Heron Can Read This, You’re Too Close”
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About today’s post: I have been nearly blind for many months and so have been largely absent from WordPress blogs. Eye surgery was supposed to take place at the end of March, but has unfortunately been delayed until the end of May. Until then, Patience is the word of the day.
Because of my near-blindness, I’m not able to link in my posts to the various host sites for WP challenges/tags in the way I have always done in the past, but please know that I value the sense of community here, especially among the Lens Artists, Cee Neuner, Debbie Smyth, BeckyB, Denzil, I.J., and more, who all encourage the entire international network of photographers and writers. Sorry that I cannot link directly at this time – this is the best I can do for now.
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I do love a happy ending, and hope my eye surgeon delivers one for the Herons & me! Patience Grasshopper.
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Great Blue Herons at TCAN Lobby One-Woman Show January & February 2022 – babsjeheron
Once again, the Great Blue Heron diving beneath the water’s surface graced gallery walls.
TCAN One-Woman Show January through February 2022 Lobby Wall With TCAN Sign Reflected; TCAN Stained glass art by Carol Krentzman, framed by Jay Ball
My Great Blue Heron photographs were once again on display on the walls of the lobby and theater in a free one-woman show at the Summer Street Gallery, of The Center for Arts in Natick. It was great to see so many of you there.
Since 2001, the Center for Arts Natick has been housed in the circa 1875 historic Central Fire House, where the Summer Street Gallery provides an opportunity for accomplished visual artists in the region to have their work prominently displayed for TCAN’s diverse and loyal audience.
The Center for Arts Natick believes the arts are essential to a complete human experience and to the creation of a vibrant, healthy community. TCAN serves the Boston MetroWest region by increasing opportunities to experience, participate in, and learn about the arts. To this end, TCAN strives to present arts programs of the highest standard that are available to everyone. TCAN dedicates its resources to providing community access to diverse arts programs, reducing barriers to attendance, and building appreciation through arts education.
If you’re in the Boston or Metro West area, please stop by TCAN to see the wonderful gallery displays of artworks by many talented visual artists, as well as excellent live music performances and stage plays. The gallery is open whenever the box office is open, so please check hours here.
As always, many of my own photos were taken on the waterways of the Charles River watershed.
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.
Natick Center Cultural District logo
Folks, now that some areas have opened back up in a new normal, please consider supporting your local Arts communities – whether music, theater, crafts, visual arts venues, and others. All have been impacted over the past THREE years and they still need your love more than ever.
.
The Natick Center Cultural District is situated in a friendly, classic New England town hosting a vibrant, contemporary fusion of art, culture and business. Click here and here to learn more!
.
.
My brick & mortar presence in Massachusetts dates back to 2009 in several local venues/galleries.
TCAN – The Center for Arts Natick – One-woman photography show through February 2022
.
Natick Town Hall – Current group exhibit thru January 3 2023
.
Five Crows Gallery in Natick – Represented since 2013
.
Audubon Sanctuary
.
Be a fly on the wall! Please CLICK HERE to see the Great Blue Herons gracing the gallery walls.
.
.
Remember: Walk softly and carry a long lens.™
May the Muse be with you.™
The Tao of Feathers™
A Patience of Herons™
© 2003-2023 Babsje. (https://babsjeheron.wordpress.com)
Great Blue Heron, Kayaking, TCAN, Five Crows, Natick Center Cultural District, Earth Day, PSA
Heron and Swimming Deer for Earth Day
Great Blue Heron in the cove, foraging. – babsjeheron
Raise your hand if you remember your first Earth Day
White Tail Deer Doe with Fawn – babsjeheron
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The subtle shift in the tilt of the Great Blue Heron’s head alerted me to an unseen presence. The environment felt suddenly charged.
Great Blue Heron peering across the cove – babsjeheron
The Great Blue Heron perched gazing off to the east under half-closed eyes, and I sensed that she was going to go to sleep standing there.
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It was mid-morning, her early fishing and feeding done. The log next to the blooming pickerel weed made a quiet resting place.
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She was unmoving, serene, a study in tranquility, and those qualities were once again contagious – I felt the peacefulness of the space we shared, as I always do in the presence of Herons.
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Looking through leaves of my natural cover hide/blind – babsjeheron
Half an hour elapsed when a shift in the tilt of her head signaled that she was alert and watching something on the opposite shore. I was lulled into a sense of complacency, and thought that it was probably just the Irish Setter I had noticed ambling along the shore when I paddled into the cove that morning.
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The Heron stiffened upright suddenly, as though coiled for action. The environment felt charged. Something, intuition perhaps, told me it wasn’t an Irish Setter at all. Maybe the Fox I’d photographed there a few years earlier was back!
Deer along the banks of the cove, directly across from the Great Blue Heron – babsjeheron
Holding my breath, I stared through the lens directly into the eyes of – not an Irish Setter nor a Fox – a large, mature Deer, a first-ever Deer sighting in the cove.
For forty-five minutes, the three of us shared the lower cove. The Deer watched the Heron during breaks in munching tender leafy bushes, but didn’t seem aware of me. The Heron also didn’t pay any attention to me, but watched the Deer intently, at one point flying about ten feet for a closer look.
And me? I watched both Deer and Heron with my heart on my sleeve.
Time stood still as I put the camera down and peered through my higher-magnification binoculars. I soaked in those enormous soulful eyes, the tickly-looking whiskers, and the adorable ears that seemed to swivel with their own sense of direction, the better to hear us with as the children’s fable says.
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The encounter ended as all such wildlife-human encounters should end, utterly without drama: nobody spooked or flushed anybody.
The Deer finished munching greens, turned and sauntered softly back into the woods.
The Great Blue Heron stared after the Deer for a long while, and then once again took up her perch on the log.
And I, still wordless from the wonder of what had just unfolded, paddled on to the next lake, smiling all the way.
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Fast forward ten months
Silent as a whisper, the Deer
Poem by BabsjeWhat of last summer’s Doe
Who watched from the shore
The Heron preening,
Ears attuned for movement,
Then ambled off into the ferns?That was long ago –
Before that bad winter
Took so much.Today
She bowed to nibble
Columbine and hosta
On the far shore.And swam home.
In less than a minute
Water sluiced from her shoulders
Her heavy udders,
Then she was gone
Silent as a whisper
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A glimpse through trees – could it be the White-tailed Deer? – babsjeheron
White Tail Deer Entering the Water Alongside the Dock – babsjeheron
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White Tail Deer Swimming – babsjeheron
White Tail Deer Approaching the Shore – babsjeheron
White Tail Deer Climbing out of Water – babsjeheron
.White Tail Deer Vanishing into the Woods – babsjeheron
Fast forward four more months.
White Tail Deer Doe with Fawn – babsjeheron
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Between the first Deer encounter and the second one ten months later, the Polar Vortex had brought devastating, vicious cold.
Seeing a Deer swimming after the killing colds of winter was thrilling.
Viewing the photos on download was heartwarming: the Deer was the same one I had seen one day that previous summer. She had survived that harsh winter, and she had apparently given birth in the interim.
Taken four months later, the last photo of that Doe with her Fawn, still brings great joy.
Great joy.
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About today’s post: I have been nearly blind for many months and so have been largely absent from WordPress blogs. Eye surgery was supposed to take place at the end of March, but has unfortunately been delayed until the end of May. Until then, Patience is the word of the day.
Because of my near-blindness, I’m not able to link in my posts to the various host sites for WP challenges/tags in the way I have always done in the past, but please know that I value the sense of community here, especially among the Lens Artists, Cee Neuner, Debbie Smyth, BeckyB, Denzil, I.J., and more, who all encourage the entire international network of photographers and writers. Sorry that I cannot link directly at this time – this is the best I can do for now.
.
.
I do love a happy ending, and hope my eye surgeon delivers one for the Herons & me! Patience Grasshopper.
.
.
.
.
Great Blue Herons at TCAN Lobby One-Woman Show January & February 2022 – babsjeheron
Once again, the Great Blue Heron diving beneath the water’s surface graced gallery walls.
TCAN One-Woman Show January through February 2022 Lobby Wall With TCAN Sign Reflected; TCAN Stained glass art by Carol Krentzman, framed by Jay Ball
My Great Blue Heron photographs were once again on display on the walls of the lobby and theater in a free one-woman show at the Summer Street Gallery, of The Center for Arts in Natick. It was great to see so many of you there.
Since 2001, the Center for Arts Natick has been housed in the circa 1875 historic Central Fire House, where the Summer Street Gallery provides an opportunity for accomplished visual artists in the region to have their work prominently displayed for TCAN’s diverse and loyal audience.
The Center for Arts Natick believes the arts are essential to a complete human experience and to the creation of a vibrant, healthy community. TCAN serves the Boston MetroWest region by increasing opportunities to experience, participate in, and learn about the arts. To this end, TCAN strives to present arts programs of the highest standard that are available to everyone. TCAN dedicates its resources to providing community access to diverse arts programs, reducing barriers to attendance, and building appreciation through arts education.
If you’re in the Boston or Metro West area, please stop by TCAN to see the wonderful gallery displays of artworks by many talented visual artists, as well as excellent live music performances and stage plays. The gallery is open whenever the box office is open, so please check hours here.
As always, many of my own photos were taken on the waterways of the Charles River watershed.
.
.
.
Natick Center Cultural District logo
Folks, now that some areas have opened back up in a new normal, please consider supporting your local Arts communities – whether music, theater, crafts, visual arts venues, and others. All have been impacted over the past THREE years and they still need your love more than ever.
.
The Natick Center Cultural District is situated in a friendly, classic New England town hosting a vibrant, contemporary fusion of art, culture and business. Click here and here to learn more!
.
.
My brick & mortar presence in Massachusetts dates back to 2009 in several local venues/galleries.
TCAN – The Center for Arts Natick – One-woman photography show through February 2022
.
Natick Town Hall – Current group exhibit thru January 3 2023
.
Five Crows Gallery in Natick – Represented since 2013
.
Audubon Sanctuary
.
Be a fly on the wall! Please CLICK HERE to see the Great Blue Herons gracing the gallery walls.
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Remember: Walk softly and carry a long lens.™
May the Muse be with you.™
The Tao of Feathers™
A Patience of Herons™
© 2003-2023 Babsje. (https://babsjeheron.wordpress.com)
Great Blue Heron, Kayaking, TCAN, Five Crows, Natick Center Cultural District, Earth Day, Deer, Swimming Deer
Babsje Heron 