Snowy Egret

This is a deceptively tranquil scene from my visit to southern California two weeks ago. On the sunny morning when I photographed this Snowy Egret in the marshes of Upper Newport Bay there was a constant roar of commuter traffic in the background and airplanes taking off from John Wayne airport. I'm not sure I could ever get used to the incongruity of the situation, but the presence of the birds there certainly made the surrounding chaos less oppressive.