Herons are all over the place around our hotel and marina. Here's a great blue watching life go by.

The San Diego Fest is a good time. The vendor mart is small but jammed packed, we talked noon-stop for almost eight hours! We're in the optics section and we're lucky because we have a window view. I checked the gift vendors and they are tucked away in a room with no view. Something interesting on a side note was someone selling organic soaps. The soaps were named after endangered species and a percentage of the profits goes to conservation. They of course had an ivory-billed woodpecker soap, but I was not allowed to take a picture of it. Hmmm? Do they have secret ingredients or does the Cornell policy of not talking about ivory-bills spill over into the world of organic soaps?

In the optic vendor room we can see an osprey nest, way out over the water that's been built on top of a condemned boat. It's fun to have a good target to test out binos and scopes.

I'm enjoying the common birds that I don't see in my neck of the woods especially this time of year. They are so people tolerant too. Here is a juvenile black-crowned night heron hanging out on some rocks (right). I took this photo using my digital camera and DLS binos.

There is also a small armada of snowy egrets hanging out by the convention center, but they are too quick for me to get a decent photo, I will try again later.