It was, I thought, pure dumb luck that I found them. Laying flat on my stomach on plywood planks on the muddy bank of a pond, I’d spent all morning trying to capture the perfect image of an erratic egret fishing for its breakfast. I was having little luck trying to fit a lightning-fast bird that was 30 feet away perfectly into the frame. As the sun rose high enough to make the white bird an exposure problem, and my back started to ache, the water exploded, and a blaze of pink crashed down to my left. I dared not move.

With breath clenched, I strained to focus one eye through a hole in my camouflage netting. An orange eyeball stared