During a recent trip to Missouri I was fortunate enough to catch some fun shots of birds. Most are native birds but I couldn't resist sharing an incident with an escapee from a neighboring farm.

First up is a great blue heron. These are common across the Midwest. This grand fellow looked like royalty surrounded by a court of turtles.

Another fun character was this cormorant. He was sunning himself while a great blue heron was hunting in the background. I was roughly a hundred yards away but he kept giving me a stare of mistrust.

The next pair included a male turkey wooing a female. I was lucky to catch it out of the corner of my eye as it too was roughly a hundred yards out as I was driving. I pulled over and got the camera from the trunk, fearful that I wouldn't get a chance to shoot them. As expected, they stopped and stared at me for a minute until they were certain that I was not hunting them. Although I've been lucky to have random turkeys cross my path within a few feet, I've almost never been able to sneak up to them when I spot them in the distance.

When you look at the tom you might wonder if it was the inspiration of the character Squidward's face in Spongebob.

Speaking of turkeys, meat the turkey vulture. They aren't related. I found these two turkey vultures sunning themselves in some thicker woods. I could tell that one was getting wary of me and would take flight, so I waited around and was fortunate that he flew toward me rather than away.

Lastly is this non-native bird, the male peacock. He escaped from the neighbor. My sister's cat stalked it for quite a while, perhaps thinking he was a lion after an ostrich. While I've heard peacocks many times, this was the first time I ever heard their honking sound that reminded me of an old vehicle horn. I'm guessing it was his warning call to tell the cat to stay back. The cat never captured the large bird, but the bird did capture the cat's attention for half an hour until it slipped away back to its home.

I saw plenty of others but failed to get close enough for decent shots. Maybe next year I’ll capture the oriole and lively kingfisher that taunted me just out of range.