Glad to be proven wrong

 I had thought it strange that this hyper alert and hyper sensitive Striated Heron would fledge at the tiniest of a waft of my presence as it usually did, or perhaps it thought it was well hidden from my view by the leaves and branches, and so it held on to its perch as if frozen except for the occasional stretch of the neck.

And so I approached slowly to test how close I could get to it, and pretty close going by the following uncropped image.

But lo and behold, instead of this one fleeing, what emerged from down below was shockingly (to say the least) a Buffy Fish Owl on a bright late morning, that obviously was perched below the Heron which explained its unusual frozen behaviour!

The Big One fled into the nearest cover right across the river, and as I tried to scan its presence, it suddenly flew out, a gorgeous being, slowly and soundlessly right past me into the densest foliage further up the river.

My first regret was the inability to obtain a single image of this One but on second thought, to witness it flying ever so lightly and gracefully up the river with all the glorious expanse of its wings outstretched did more than made up for the lack of any still image!  Phew!