Winter Wildlife

While walking along the Paint Branch Trail earlier this month I had these two sightings on the same day. First, I saw a few people staring at something a few feet from the trail, and when I got to the spot there was this heron standing still as they often do while stalking fish. Neither I nor the other on-lookers had an explanation for tis sight since herons normally flee when humans get too near. We speculated that the bird may have been injured although there were no visible wounds. Maybe he was just too cold to fly away.

Further along the trail, I found this young-looking racoon hunging a tree which again was just off the trail: