A friend and I were walking through the Japanese garden at the Fort Worth Botanical garden some years ago and came upon an amazing scene--a full-grown blue heron perched, like a statue, waiting for a carp small enough for him to catch to swim past. He knew we were there, but we had walked to our overlook silently and stood like statues ourselves. Gradually a few other adults approached slowly and silently and we stood looking across the water, wishing luck to this beautiful bird.

The noisy self-centered family with big kids that came romping through the garden could not be warned to be quiet without disturbing the bird. They picked up no clues from the humans standing stock-still, barely breathing. The weren't looking at anything native in the garden, they were engrossed in themselves, so were utterly clueless when they galloped onto the landing, the bird flew off, and all of the people assembled there turned as one to glare at these oafs.

Oh, well. This photographer was lucky!

SRS