Bird on a Wire

Or perhaps a TV antenna.



I have been a bit fixated on/obsessed with flowers lately. For about a year now, if I am completely honest. Actually, ever since our trip to Colorado back in 2002; no, wait: the trip to Giverny in 2001. That is when I started getting a little snap-happy.

Sometimes when I am shooting flowers, I notice birds. Particularly cardinals — mainly because they are so pretty, but also because they have a very distinct whistle or chirp or call or whatever it is that birds do. (Something I read somewhere, recently, referred to it as “yapping.” Which could be accurate!)

A few winters ago, after an all-night snow, I looked out my living-room window and saw a couple of redbirds, male and female, hopping around on the whiteness. Unfortunately, I had no color film, so the photo went unshot. And became one of the photos I will always wish I could have taken.

(Among the others are countless sunsets, certain moonrises, an Abraham Lincoln impersonator pushing a shopping cart through the produce section of the local IGA store in The Ville, and Jo Jo Johnson [the best h.s. basketball player I have ever seen] launching a baseline jump shot whilst standing on the chest of one of his top rivals, who had been knocked down, flat on his back, when he was trying to guard Jo Jo.)

Many springs ago, when I had lived in this town and my very first apartment for about 8 months, I kept noticing pieces of straw and clumps of mud on my porch every morning when I left for work. Sometimes I would kick it out of the way; other times I would leave it, but by the time I returned, the straw and mud was always gone.

It never occurred to me to look UP.

A couple of weeks later, I heard this strange chirping sound. I stepped out onto my porch and looked up (finally!) in the direction the chirping was coming from. There, I saw a nest, and just above it, I could see 4 or 5 tiny beaks.

I tried to take some pictures of the baby birds, but I had not been a photographer all that long and my knowledge of macro shooting was non-existent; hence, I ended up with a bunch of shots of blurry beaks mixed in with pieces of straw and clumps of mud.

I always sort of admired how efficiently those birdies went about building that nest. Today, when I left the news office, I was reminded of this when I saw a couple of birds perched on the sign at the news office, pieces of grass and string clasped between their beaks.

: )

In the meantime, some elusive cardinals came close enough for me to capture them, digitally, yesterday.