Our latest visitor

The wildlife around here continues to entertain us.  Our latest visitor was this Great Blue Heron.

I went outside to get firewood when all of a sudden the chickens and turkeys started running around making lots of strange noises.  I looked up to see if a hawk was nearby and saw the heron flying over the house and then landing next to the stream.  He/She walked up the stream for a couple of minutes then flew away.  I love to watch Great Blue Herons fly; they look so prehistoric. 
We have not seen any fish in our stream, it's too shallow and fast moving I think.  But we have seen frogs, so maybe that is what the heron was searching for.
After the heron flew away we noticed that we couldn't see any chickens in their yard, except for our rooster.  Apparently the rooster's noises made all the chickens hide under and in the chicken house.  Way to go Cassius!
When my daughter uploaded the pictures of the heron onto my laptop she found the pictures she took of our one, very brief, snow fall. I was at work that day and asked her to take lots of pictures since the weather report made it likely that the snow would be melted by the time I would be home and it would be daylight.
So here are a few:

The weather forecast is calling for 1-3 inches starting Christmas Eve so hopefully we will have a white Christmas!