Peggy Badten got within 20 feet when photographing this great blue heron, hunting for fish in Moccasin Creek, just below the outfall of the Aberdeen (S.D.) Wastewater Treatment Plant.
“We get many types of wildlife around the treatment plant,” says Badten, pretreatment coordinator and chemist at the plant, in northeastern South Dakota. The heron, part of a nesting pair, stopped by last April and “was perfectly content to have his picture taken,” Badten recalls. “He was too busy fishing to notice me.”
The bald eagle appeared on a very cold morning in late February. “I was checking the plant outfall when I
