When photographer Carlton Ward returned to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge to check the camera traps he’d set up a month before, the results were not what he expected. In November 2017, the Florida-based photographer had carefully set up his rig amid tangled roots, mud, and leaf litter on a flooded trail in hopes of capturing an elusive panther. But as he scrolled through the images, there were no shots of the endangered cat. Instead, Ward found about 4,000 pictures of various birds, including egrets, ibises, cormorants, and herons, that had triggered the camera and crashed his shoot. One that stood out, he says, was a majestic Great Blue Heron that looked like it was almost posing for the camera. The wading bird is the largest heron in North America and thrives pretty much anywhere there is water, from desert rivers to subtropical mangrove swamps and even water-treatment facilities. Unknowingly, this one had stolen the spotlight. “He seemed pretty...