A prime spot to photograph Great Blues flying by… and it was occupied. Now, a few years ago I would have been long gone.

You can see the big guy is pretty comfortable. Tail wrapped around the old post, even a stick draped around his nose (probably from walking through the reeds, nobody here is dumb enough to touch him).

On this side of my new friend I could catch a few Herons flying into the swamp trees gathering sticks. On the other side I had open views of nesting trees.

Easy solution. Leave him in the middle and go back and forth depending on the Herons. It worked just fine.

Below you can see he did get up to see what I was doing. To an Alligator a photographer with Herons is pretty boring after a few minutes.

So he watched, eyes got heavy, and went to sleep.

This trail was a good 8 feet (2.4 M) wide here, I could walk around him and be dry (swamp is on both side of the trail here).

Ellen (PassingByPhoto.com) walked by also. Even after we moved on he stayed there deep asleep.

BTW, I don’t recommend getting close here unless you have been around them often. And even then a healthy space, and respect is required.