What's uglier than a night heron?

Answer: A juvenile night heron. Before last weekend I'd really only seen mature birds in various states of plumage but this juvenile is really a weird looking dude.

This fella was seen at Jell's Park - Tom kindly joined me for a mid-afternoon outing & he was manned with the original digital SLR & lenses (daddy has a better camera now!). We discussed the different settings you can use & here's his photo of an obliging dragon fly he spotted:

We also had good views of darter (2) including witnessing why it is also known as snake bird. Watching one swim with body submerged, neck and head sticking out of the water was initially a little confronting (no photo of that sorry)!