Great pics of the herons, Zen - if you paddle on the Potomac around dc, the herons are so used to humans they will let you get quite close without moving.

Herons always make the bird/dinosaur/reptile link look very obvious to me.

I finally wrote up a trip report - it'll have a lot of the same pics I posted here:
http://cpakayaker.com/forums/viewtop...3833d1348bcb8d