The Green Heron was back again this morning. Or at least, a Green Heron was back. I have no way of knowing whether this is the same little visitor we have watched for the past few days or another one who discovered that the puddle happens to be a pretty decent place to find breakfast.
Now that I know what I am looking for, though, I can’t help wondering how long they have actually been here.
The first time I noticed one, I thought it was a mallard with its head held strangely. I was far enough away that the sunlight and glare made it difficult to see, and even zooming my phone in as far as it would go didn’t immediately solve the mystery. It wasn’t until I could really see the shape of its head, that long pointed bill, and the body underneath it that I realized I was looking at something I hadn’t noticed here before.
Except maybe I had.
This morning I took a photograph without zooming all the way in, partly because I wanted to see what the Green Heron actually looks like from where I sit. In that photograph, it is tiny. Even knowing exactly where it is standing, it nearly disappears against the shallow water, duckweed, grasses, shadows, and sunlight along the opposite bank.
That made me wonder how many times I have looked directly at one and thought, “There’s a duck over there.” Maybe I registered a small bird standing near the shoreline and never gave it another thought. Maybe Green Herons have been visiting the puddle much longer than the few days I have known to call them Green Herons.
There is something humbling about realizing that noticing something for the first time does not mean it has arrived for the first time.
I have spent a lot of time watching this puddle, especially this summer. I have learned where the geese gather, where the mallards rest, where Stella and Stanley like to fish, and which little movements along the shoreline are worth watching for another moment. I sometimes think I know this little patch of water pretty well.
Then something I hadn’t learned to see yet stands right in front of me.
The Green Heron also seems particularly interested in the low, shallow water. The very conditions that can make the puddle look messy or diminished from where I sit appear to make it useful to a little heron quietly stalking whatever might become breakfast. What looks like less water to me may look like opportunity to something else.
Maybe that is one of the reasons I keep watching.
The puddle isn’t necessarily changing every time I discover something new about it. Sometimes I am the thing that has changed. I have learned another shape, another behavior, another place to look, and suddenly something that might have always been there becomes visible.
I wonder how much of life works that way.
There are people, places, experiences, and ordinary moments we pass every day because we haven’t yet learned what we are looking at. Then something teaches us to notice differently, and we begin seeing things that were never actually hidden. We simply didn’t know enough yet to recognize them.
So I don’t know when the Green Herons discovered the puddle.
I only know when I discovered them.
And those may be two very different dates.
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