Cloudy day at the pond

Jack is feeling better and wanted to take a short walk today, so we headed up to the pond. We walked by the playground and up to the dairy before going down to the pond, so we first saw that little upper "lobe" of the pond north of the bridge. Nothing there. On the bridge I saw that an egret was there! Looked like a great egret to me, but the plumage looked fancier on the back. Not on the head, only the back. Then walking around the east edge of the pond I found the wood duck among some grasses in the water, all tucked in next to his mallard lady love. Finally Jack got to see the wood duck! He looked up once or twice but was mostly tucked in. Walking farther around I saw a double-crested cormorant swimming and fishing. As we were watching it and I was trying to take pictures, a black-crowned night heron flew in and landed on the far edge of the pond, on the sanctuary side, a bit further south than where we were! We had a look at him, and then I tried to find the cormorant again because I didn't have any decent pictures yet. I found him perched and drying off, with the egret perched close by. We looked for the night heron again, but couldn't find him. He either left or his powers of camouflage defeated us! It was a great day. Sadly the pictures all pretty much suck. I think there are two things going on. First, the cloudiness means a longer exposure and more time for my hands to jiggle. Second, somehow the camera is overexposing several of the shots. The egret in particular I couldn't get a good shot of, he was just this glowing white mass in most of the pictures. I might have to resort to actually reading the camera manual........