There’s a colony of snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons that return each spring to the East Bay to mate and rear their young. April is nest-building time, and one mate attends to constructing the nest while the other gathers the requisite material. Here we see an egret deftly plucking some promising nesting material from the water’s surface. I photographed this image with a Canon EOS 5DS, Canon EF 500mm f4L, Canon 1.4x extender, f/7.1, 1/2500 second, 200 ISO. I used Nik Viveza 2 to brighten the egret’s head, and Nik Define 2 to reduce overall noise.