The eye begins to see.
There are days when no matter how hard you try you just can’t get it off the ground, when the catch-of-the-day is so small you feel like you ought throw it back or use it for bait to catch something really worth catching.
Heck, there are days when it’s hard enough to just walk on water, much less soar.
Standing his ground,
the Great Blue Heron reflects —
’til even his shadow is still.
Old stick-in-the-mud,
who could imagine such
graceful flight possible?
I walked Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge for the first time in years today and had a delightful time, despite sporadic bursts of machine gun fire and thudding booms of artillery pieces drifting across the valley from Ft. Lewis.
For a very short time I had a chance to experience this area the way pioneers must have experienced it, nature at its most beautiful.
I really didn’t have too many expectations; I just wanted to try out a new 400 mm telephoto lens, the one I got to take bird pictures.
Strangely enough, one of the first birds I encountered was a Kingfisher, a bird I didn’t even know existed in the Pacific Northwest until I read a Tacoma Tribune article about Point Defiance Park last Sunday. Once I saw the article , I decided that I would get a picture of each of the birds they showed.
It’s not as good a picture as the one above or some others I took and will probably post later, but I was simply delighted the picture I took of a bird sitting on top a dead snag turned out to be the very bird I most wanted to get a picture of. Hopefully it will follow the recent pattern of the Western Tiger Swallowtail and the Hummingbird, with gradually improving pictures until I get one I’m really happy with and can move on in pursuit of another perfect moment.
