Finding Herons in Trees

I may be too far away to get good pictures of the herons on the island, but I still think images of Great Blue Herons standing on treetops are pretty amazing.  Why not create ART?  These are silhouettes copied from pictures I took last week.



For this one I had to "erase" some of the tree branches to show the smaller heron clearly.


I actually have spent quite a bit of time looking at these blurry images.  I've learned to recognize the birds by shape, and can even find them by adjusting brightness and contrast, adding filters, or viewing different color channels one at a time.  I know there have been close to 100 birds on the island at a time.  I can't prove it, of course.  It is impossible to see them with the naked eye from shore, and you certainly can't tell from the pictures.  Sometimes, though, changing the contrast is all it takes for a bird image to become visible. There is one perfectly identifiable heron in the lower circle below.


If I blow up the image a bit, you can see him clearly!  Cool, right?