Great blue heron

Oh, dang.

Dang, Great Blue Heron.

Oh, it's gonna take off?

Gorgeous.

Big Picture has been around for a number of years.

And it was the Great Blue Heron and the Cypress, the false.

I put it in Birds in the Environment or whatever the equivalent title was.

yeah they actually placed it in flora and fauna i think or something like that like more the landscape one hey i took it it was highly commended it wasn't the winner of the category but um yeah that was interesting they did uh yeah okay

What were some of the first, when you started getting out there then to some of those areas, what were some of the first birds you remember identifying, you know, kind of on your own, that, oh, that's what that is, or?

Oh, great blue heron is one that I, you know, have always loved, have always loved.

And as a matter of fact, before I went out to Tinicum, I decided, oh, God.

I was like 20 or 21 and I wanted to get a tattoo.

So I went to a bookstore cause I'm like, I'm going to find a really great picture of a great blue heron.

Cause like, that's, that's my animal.

Like that's, I really love, and I still do love the great blue heron, you know? And I got Ken Kaufman's lives of North American birds and I was paging through it and to find the great blue heron.

And I was reading and I was looking at all these different pictures and I had no idea the kinds of warblers, the most beautiful birds that we could see just right around here in this country.

If we could bring up the graphic of the sign that we've got.

wonderful the sign that's been being proposed is reflective of the downtown vibe and vision of Old Town Ridgefield with the font and stylization that matches a lot of the downtown aesthetic that's been present in downtown as well as the blue and orange that is reflective of our community and our relationship with the school district and of course the Blue Heron Crane, which is a big part of the city's connection to the wildlife refuge in our natural spaces.

So this is the design that's being put forward to Parks Board that we're asking for consideration.

Now with this, I wanted to also share our draft community park monument signage policy.

Before you see it.

If you just follow the Great Blue Heron's head upward.

The bird identification app Merlin can hear it.

It's picking up a Baltimore Oriole.

He had paintings, and I'm going to give you some of the names of these paintings.

Widgens on the Wing, or the Susquehanna, Mallard Morning, Snowy Ecred, and Great Blue Heron.

These are quite a few titles of his paintings that I then used to capture his life's work in a song called the Ned Smith Song.

Throughout the years, I performed with Christine as Christine and the Rogue King, but you know when we play along the river at times, we call ourselves Christine and the River King.