Ad men hate people like me.
Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars each year to build a rapport with consumers through witty little phrases. Make us smile, and we will buy almost anything. Prostitutes and politicians are experts with that ploy.
Unfortunately for the PR types, I am one of those people who always remember the catchy phrase and then have no idea what product I am suppose to buy.. I saw a recent study in The Economist that tells me I am not at sea all alone.
I thought of one of those old advertising phrases this morning. My experience of the flocked wading birds yesterday still had me a bit excited. That is why I was really disappointed in the shots I took on my phone camera.
So, I got up early, grabbed my Sony NEX-6 (along with my telephoto lens) and sat forth to shoot myself some birds.
The first casualty of the morning was my walk. Birding and power walking are not compatible companions. Furtive movement is last thing I need when stalking birds. I would probably be cautious, as well, if I inhabited their link in the food chain.
I usually shoot from a small opening in the mangroves that surround the little patch of water where I saw the waders yesterday. I had attached my zoom lens and donned my birding binoculars in an attempt to move as little as possible once I stationed myself in my blind.
I needn't have bothered. The photograph at the top of this essay is what I saw. Where there were hundreds of birds yesterday, there were now only a few.
And that advertisement slogan that popped into my mind? "It's not nice to fool mother nature."
That was what I was doing. Because the birds were there yesterday, I thought they would be there again this morning.
Why they were not, I do not know. Maybe because the sun was not out. Maybe because today is a full moon. Maybe because it is the third Tuesday in February.
Mother nature needs no silly reasons. It just is. And we need to be realistic enough to realize nature is not our servant. Marsha Norman caught a bit of that spirit in "A Bit of Earth" from the otherwise-dreadful Secret Garden.
She'll grow to love the tender roses
Lilies fair, the iris tall
And then in fall, her bit of earth
Will freeze and kill them all
Most of the major waders were off to other hunting grounds. But not these black-necked stilts. Watching them wade through the water, I was a bit confused. Then I realized that the water is not shallow. They are stilts.
I startled this tricolored heron (once provincially known as a Louisiana heron). But I have always felt herons are far more photogenic when they roost on trees.
I finally found some of the major waders in the next pond over. These wood storks, for instance, were stirring up troubled waters -- as storks are wont to do.
Finding both varieties of great blue herons in one shot is somewhat rare. But there they were -- a great blue and its white morph.
While I was shooting, I heard the constant whistle and crackling of a great-tailed grackle, but I could not see it. Grackles fill the niche of jays and crows here. Clever. Gregarious. And with far better voices than any crow.
Had I looked straight up, I would have seen it. Or, rather, them. Three grackles sitting atop a utility pole. Each one looking as if it were posing to become a finial.
When I walked over to another pond, I saw what may be my favorite bird in these parts. A white ibis.
Two white ibises, in this case. There is something about their Durantean bills that always makes me smile.
Sort of the way you smile when you see a clown. One of the funny clowns, mind you. Not the kind that will kill a series of young men and then bury them in his basement. But, you just never know which kind you are meeting, do you?
Once I started shooting, nothing on wing was safe. Terns. Swallows. Vireos. Tits. Kingbirds. Hummingbirds. Kingfishers. Doves.
But enough is enough.
Well, there is one more. I could not let this black vulture Golgothean portrait slip by unnoticed. I will leave the caption to you.
I may not fool mother nature, but I do like messing with her mind.
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