@smokey it is indeed a heron! It landed right next to us and then tooled around in the pond, fishing. It was wild. I've never seen one from so close before. They're GIGANTIC!
@eli Cool! We used to see herons flying overhead and sometimes sitting/fishing; they’d sit on the trees around this creek right where it went under the road (in the summer, invariably, a few people would park and go fishing there themselves, so it must have been a good spot), and you could tell they were large, but I’ve never been that close to one myself.