spring

On the Trillium Trail - April 2025 /  by Todd Henson

Trillium, rain drops and pollen

It was late April of 2025 and my father and I were out for a drive. Given the time of year we decided to stop by a wildlife management area along the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia that we’ve visited in the past to see if the trilliums were in bloom, and were they ever! This is the largest display we’ve seen so far.

While driving we could see them in the forest all along both sides of the road, and when we arrived at the small and crowded dirt parking area there were flowers scattered all over the forest floor as far as you could see. Such a beautiful display. I often see photos of the wide fields of wildflowers further west and think how lucky those people are. But then I see things like this and realize we’re also very lucky. Nature is a wondrous thing.

The Trillium Trail

Trillium and the tree

Along the Trillium Trail

Deep pink trillium

Trilliums as far as the eye can see

Trillium pollen

Inside a trillium

Forest of trillium and mayapple

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Spring Roadtrip Along Franklin Pike, West Virginia /  by Todd Henson

A winding road through West Virginia in early spring

My father suggested a roadtrip into West Virginia the first weekend of April, which led us through some beautiful mountains and valleys. Heading south from Petersburg along Franklin Pike we saw many scenes like the one here, absolutely beautiful country roads weaving through the valley in early spring. It was a wonderful drive with only a very brief moment when it almost began to drizzle.

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Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron /  by Todd Henson

A juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

Some species of heron seem very common in the greater DC area, such as great blue and green herons. But night-herons rank among the species I rarely see. They tend to be a bit more secretive, perhaps more often out hunting at dusk and night, though as these photos show, they can also be seen by day.

Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron

What we have here is a juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron. There are two species of night-heron in the area, black-browned and yellow-crowned, and if these were adults you’d more easily see why each is named as they are, though the yellow crown on an adult may be difficult to see. Adults are very distinctive and easy to identify. But the juveniles can look very similar. This one is more grey and has various markings on the feathers that help identify it as yellow-crowned.

In late July of 2008 we found several of these juvenile yellow-crowned night-herons walking the pathways around the pools at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, in Washington DC, where they grow lotus and water lilies and where large crowds gather to see the blooms each summer. Night-herons may be more secretive, in general, but given these were juveniles and that they seem to have hatched in an area where many people gather, they were very bold and unafraid, seemingly ignoring the people and focusing on the water and any prey they could find.

Juvenile yellow-crowned night heron moving towards the water

Technical Note

A quick technical note to admit to my mistakes and to demonstrate that even when we make mistakes it’s often possible to salvage something of value from them (beyond the obvious learning opportunity). On a previous photo session I’d been photographing in a very dark area and had my camera’s ISO set very high (1000 was high at the time). I’d forgotten to set it back to normal when finished, and I’d forgotten to double check my settings before setting out this morning. So for much of the morning I kept wondering why I was able to achieve such high shutter speeds (1/8000 second). Well, it’s because my ISO was set way too high for a bright sunny day.

Lessons Learned

So, what lessons did I learn from this experience and from the mistakes I made?

  • Reset my camera settings to my typical values after each photo session. That way I have a known place to start from next time I pick up the camera.

  • Always double check my settings before my next photo session, just in case I’ve forgotten to reset them. This is when I can also change the settings to suit whatever environment I’m going into if I know to expect a certain level of light.

  • If something seems off in the field, such as unusually high shutter speeds, then stop and double check all my settings. I could have found my error and corrected it much sooner.

  • It’s often possible to salvage worthwhile material even after making what seems a stupid mistake. Granted, these photos will never be as technically good as they could have been. I have lost some data to noise. But thankfully it was a bright sunny day with few dark areas so the noise was surprisingly minimal and I was able to pass the photos through Lightroom’s noise reduction process to lessen the digital noise introduced by the high ISO. The photos work perfectly well for a blog post showing off a species.

Portrait view of a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron

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