Shooting the Birds

I decided to go for a walk yesterday. I like to do that sometimes with my camera, just walk and shoot whatever I see that intrigues me or makes me curious. I drove myself to the park and got out, something I have done a thousand times, as I run there a couple of times a week for exercise. There is a large creek that runs through the middle of the park and two footbridges that bookend the park over the creek.

I thought I might go down close to the creek and shoot some macros of some bugs or maybe some birds. I am not too good  at shooting birds. My attempts to get good bird shots have always failed, as they are too fast and my camera is too small. Nevertheless, as I walked along it was the birds who got my attention with their noise in the brush and the occasional flash of red as they flitted away. I tried to sneak up on them but they always flew away. It was in this way that I follwed them to the end of the creek and almost to the end of the park. I gave up on the birds and hadn't seen any bugs and there were no flowers, not even dandilions so I decided to follow the perimeter towards the western edge of the park.   At that end of the park there is a rustic barbed wire fence running from end to end and covered with brush, evergreens, and lots of brambles and wild fauna. In the summer there are hundreds of butterflies but now there were just dead brambles and leaves. This fence fascinated me because in places it wasn't a fence but was made up of other things, such as old rusty mattress springs. I had been here many times shooting whatever the seasons brought me, sometimes flowers, sometimes bugs or butterflies, sometimes the sunset over the fence. It was a beautiful place.

 I walked along the fence looking for interesting things to shoot and came upon this interesting little leaf, held captive by this berry. I loved how the setting sun shone through and lit up the leaf like amber stained glass.

I moved farther on along the fence. Then I heard the singing. I looked up to see the trees full of birds. They looked like Robin Redbreasts but were bigger and fatter. And they were watching me. Hundreds of them perched in the branches, hundreds of bird voices serenading the wind. The sound echoed in the breeze and seemed to go on endlessly, bouncing off the trees and into the chilly winter sky. They took flight in a flurry of feathers but surprisingly they didn't go far. They returned to the trees, many of them moving in closer than before, necks craning, piping back and forth across the glen. It was breathtaking. Beautiful. I stood rooted to the spot for an eternity, lost in a moment of time, mezmerized by the blue of the sky, the warmth of the setting sun on my back and the sound of the birds calling to each other. Making no sudden movements I reached for my camera. They didn't seem to mind. After a time they seemed to tire of watching me and rose to the sky and flew away as one. I had come to the park weighed down with sadness but with the flight of the birds I felt my spirit take flight as well. I left there with a smile on my face and a prayer of thanks on my lips to the God who leads me beside the still waters and green pastures and who brings peace to the weary soul