Troubled Times

June 23, 2025

With all of the terrifying actions of this current administration, my picture walks have become more and more imperative to my mental health. When I’m out taking pictures, I am lost in my own world, focused on those fleeting moments of beauty and joy that, at least for a few hours, give me the illusion of a better world—but even that can be a struggle.

Yesterday, I left the house by 7:00 a.m., before the oppressive heat of the day was expected to settle in, and went for a picture walk hoping to find monarchs, viceroys, or swallowtails flitting about in the fields or perched on newly emerged flowers. They were nowhere to be found!

You don’t have to look hard or long to find proof that we are at a crisis point regarding our butterfly populations.

“A new study published today in Science has found that populations of butterflies across the United States are declining. In addition to dramatic declines for individual species, the study concluded that total abundance of butterflies has declined by 22% from 2000 to 2020. That means that for every five butterflies seen 20 years ago, now there are only four.”

This is both disturbing and alarming. Sadly, the reasons for their decline are all too familiar: habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use. Almost every creature I love to photograph faces these same challenges. We are stewards of this earth and bear the responsibility for those losses; either through the people we elect, the poisons we use in our own yards, or the habitats we desecrate. It’s on us.

**This Blanding’s Turtle is just one of many creatures whose numbers are in decline due to habitat loss**

On a happier note, my early morning walk was filled with a multitude of much smaller butterflies than the monarchs or the swallowtails– mostly little essex skippers and the slightly larger silver-spotted skippers. I was also delighted to find a large contingent of dragonflies– eight different types to be exact, and one damselfly!

**A tiny Essex Skipper butterfly on Meadow Hawkweed**

**Silver-spotted Skipper on a small Oxeye Daisy**

**Small White butterfly** **on a tiny bit of clover**

The previous day, I had gone on an early evening walk, also trying to avoid the heat of the day and hoping to capitalize on the soft, warm light of the setting sun. Apart from the mosquitoes, early evening is a perfect time of day for nature shots! Everything seems quieter, more relaxed– even the colors quiet down! And there are creatures I rarely see, like sandhill cranes, skittish bunnies, and industrious little muskrats.

**One of two Sandhill Cranes foraging in the early evening light**

**Eastern Cottontail that hadn’t yet noticed me**

**Mama Wood Duck and her eight obedient offspring**

Sometimes, when the whole day stretches before me with no appointments or obligations, I pack myself a snack and go on a ‘field trip!’ Luckily for me, there are at least a half dozen nature preserves within an hour’s drive of where we live and I rotate through them on a regular basis. It’s always fun to go someplace ‘new’ even if I’ve been there before!

**Male Red-winged Blackbird with a damselfly snack**

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter where I take pictures, or what time of day I go, or even if I don’t find something out of the ordinary; it’s the walk itself that’s kept me sane throughout these troubled times, and the connections that have been forged as a result.

Driving into Spring

February 12, 2025

When I was a child, I thought winter was everywhere; that everybody had snow and ice and gloomy, overcast days. I didn’t know that you could get in your car and drive for a thousand miles and spring would magically appear! It wasn’t until I retired that I fully appreciated the phenomena of packing up your bags and driving into spring!

**My granddaughter, Emmy, enjoying winter like I once did**

It’s not that I disliked winter as a child, I just didn’t know anything different. It’s not that I dislike winter as an adult. I love a sunny 30 degree day, with five or six inches of pristine snow, and a wide variety of birds to photograph right outside my back door. What I don’t like are the endless days of gray skies and slushy snow with the repeated bouts of freezing rain. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t fun.

So, several years ago, my husband and I decided to spend a few of those gloomy months away from Michigan and rent a house in Florida, choosing a different city each year: Del Ray Beach, Venice, St. Augustine, St. Petersburg, Panama City Beach, and Port Charlotte.

**A beautiful Florida Limpkin in the Red Bug Slough near Sarasota, Florida**

***A Great Blue Heron in the late afternoon Florida sun***

***Red-breasted Merganser near St. Petersburg, Florida***

For most of those years, our long drive into spring included two hapless dogs, Brandy and Corky; the four of us all crammed together in a small Toyota Prius for a 10 week stay in the sunshine state. The two dogs with their two cages, and all the other paraphernalia that dogs need, took up the entire back seat of our car! They barely had room to move. Sadly, both dogs are now gone but, somehow, we haven’t found any additional space in the car!

***The ‘hapless’ dogs stuffed into our back seat***

We were in Port Charlotte in March of 2020 when news of the pandemic started to spread. It was a frightening time and we didn’t know what to do. As older adults, we were considered particularly vulnerable. What if one of us became seriously ill? What if we both became incapacitated? Who would take care of the dogs? Who would take care of us? Should we finish out our rental agreement or head home where we could be close to family and friends? Ultimately, we stayed in Florida, but we kept to ourselves.

***A very colorful Painted Bunting at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary near Naples, Florida***

***Purple Gallinule in Ollie’s Pond, Port Charlotte, Florida***

**Tri-colored Heron**, **St. Augustine, Florida**

We wore the masks that our niece, Holly, had made for us, and avoided mingling with other people unless we had to buy groceries. Back then, we even wiped down all the boxes, bags, and cans that came into our house. We just didn’t know what we were up against. Our life-saving vaccines were still months away. Fortunately, Mel and I could still continue our solitary pursuits of walking, picture taking, and fishing. They were our lifelines.

***Barred Owl, Circle B Bar Reserve, Lakeland, Florida***

***Sandhill Crane and offspring on the campus of the State College of Florida near Venice***

***Reddish Egret, St. Petersburg, Florida***

When it was time to head home, we never stopped– except for gas and a few bathroom breaks. For more than twenty hours, we took turns driving, sleeping, and snacking. And for the next two years, while the pandemic raged on, we stayed home. We stayed home the following year as well because Brandy, our last remaining dog, was becoming more and more debilitated.

***A Willet along the shore near St. Petersburg, Florida***

**A lovely pink Roseate Spoonbill** **in Ollie’s Pond, Port Charlotte, Florida**

Last year was our first time back to Florida after the pandemic, and we returned again this year. It’s wonderful to see the sun every day, and to soak up its warmth; to not have to wear masks or avoid other people, and to not have to wear seventeen layers of protective clothing just to go outside for a picture walk! I know I’ll be missing all sorts of beautiful, snow-covered birds back in Michigan but…

I think I’ll manage!

**White Pelicans in Ollie’s Pond, Port Charlotte, Florida**

Birding Days in the Sunshine State

March 22, 2024

Most of the year I’m out taking pictures in my home state of Michigan, but I always look forward to our change-of-pace visits to Florida during the winter months where I can go looking for all the beautiful birds that I rarely, if ever, find in Michigan. This was our first trip back in three years; a welcome change after more than two years of COVID, and the deaths of our two very old dogs.

Brown Pelicans on the pier waiting for a handout from the fisherman

One of my favorite Florida birds to photograph is the brown pelican. It is both charmingly elegant and absurdly acrobatic. I have found them posing stoically on a pier waiting for a tasty handout from the fishermen, and I have watched in amazement as they soar into the air, contorting their bodies like pretzels, and then plunging head first into the water. What a fun bird to watch and photograph!

By comparison, Florida also has the American white pelican; an equally fun bird to photograph, but without the acrobatic skills of its cousins, the Browns. White pelicans are scoopers not divers. They glide gracefully along the water and scoop up fish, often working cooperatively with their peers to herd a school of fish into a dense ball or toward shallow waters where it’s more difficult for the fish to escape. Cooperative herding catches more fish!

American White Pelicans sharing a funny joke in the early morning hours

A much smaller, less obvious shorebird that scurries about on the Florida coastlines is the willet. I’ve found at least one willet, usually more, on every one of my beach walks. They skitter tirelessly in and out of the waves searching for crabs, crustaceans, and mollusks in the water-soaked sands, and provide endless entertainment for me as I amble along the shore.

Willet hoping for a tasty snack to show up in the receding waves

Running around with the willets at an even faster pace, are the tiny, two-ounce sanderlings. It doesn’t seem possible that these little birds can run as fast as they do! Their little black legs are a blur as they race back and forth along the beach like cartoon characters, stopping only for a millisecond to probe the wet sand for crabs and other invertebrates left by the receding waters. Rachel Carlson, in her book Under the Sea Wind, poetically described the sanderling’s breakneck run as a “twinkle of black feet.” What a perfect description!

Mixed in with the willets and the sanderlings, I might also find the ruddy turnstone; a smaller bird than the willet but bigger than the sanderling. Its name aptly describes both its appearance and what it does! This is a stocky, reddish-brown shorebird that flips over stones, shells, and seaweed looking for food. Sometimes there are dunlins in the mix as well; a little shorebird that looks similar to the sanderling but is slightly bigger and has a longer bill.

Then there are all the gulls, terns, and skimmers either flying overhead or taking a break along the shore! I took hundreds of pictures the other day of the Forster’s terns soaring above the ocean waves, then plunging into the water to catch a fish; and hundreds more shots of the black skimmers gliding just above the surface of the water with their lower beak barely touching the water as they scooped up fish! It’s always a fun challenge trying to catch these birds in flight!

Another bird in flight that’s fun to catch is the Osprey. We have osprey in Michigan, but I rarely find them. In Florida, you can find them everywhere, hovering over both large and small bodies of water, preparing to plunge feet first into the water and grab a fish with their sharp talons! I like to catch them as they emerge from the water, a good-sized fish in tow, lifting into the air with a thousand beads of water spinning off their feathers in all directions.

When I’m not walking along the ocean beaches looking for birds, I’m stalking the smaller bodies of water in search of herons, egrets, ibises, storks, and the mostly elusive roseate spoonbills. On this particular visit to Florida, my first wood stork and spoonbill were standing at the edge of a retention pond, behind a locked fence along a busy roadway near a strip mall! It was not an easy picture to get! The herons, ibises and egrets, on the other hand, have been much more cooperative!

Then there are birds that I’ve seen on previous trips to Florida, but have yet to find here in St. Augustine; birds like the black-bellied whistling ducks, black-necked stilts, crested caracaras, glossy Ibis, gallinules, painted buntings, and sandhill cranes with their babies. To find some of those birds, Mel and I took road trip to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville, Florida.

Merritt Island is one hundred miles south of where we are now and is billed as “one of Florida’s premier birding sites.” It was established in 1963 for the protection of migratory birds and provides a wide variety of habitats including coastal dunes, saltwater marshes, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks. It is home to more than 1,500 species of plants and animals!

Black-necked Stilt at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

To get to Merritt Island, we left before dawn and arrived by 8:00 a.m. Mel and I wanted to have the entire day to wander around the refuge –and take a ridiculous number of pictures! We found black-necked stilts, common gallinules, reddish egrets, glossy ibises, roseate spoonbills, and a variety of other delightful birds. It was a day well spent!

In less than two weeks we’ll be heading back to Michigan; just in time for the daisies and the daffodils, the chatty red-winged blackbirds, the rose-breasted grosbeaks, and the comforting sounds of the spring peepers drifting through the screens on a warm April evening; all the sights and sounds I love to welcome me home!

Sandhill Crane and colt from our last trip to Florida in 2020

A Dog Named Norman

April 10, 2023

One of the many joys of a picture walk is never knowing what I’ll find or who I’ll meet along the way. Yesterday, I met a dog named Norman. It brought a smile to my face. Why would anyone name a dog, Norman, I wondered? It seemed like a very formal moniker for such a small, scruffy little beast. So, I posed the question to the human attached to the other end of the leash, “Why Norman?”

“Well,” she said, “I named him after my dad who recently passed away.”

**White-tailed deer, a common visitor on my walks**

That was even funnier, I thought, to name a dog after your dead parent, but I kept my chuckle to myself. Instead, I shared the fact that my own father was also deceased and was also named Norman! For the life of me, though, I couldn’t even imagine naming a dog after my dead parent! It just didn’t seem right–and it conjured up an unappealing visual in my head of walking my dad on a leash and cleaning up all his messes!

Earlier in the day, long before I met up with Norman, I had been walking along the creek behind our house hoping to find a wood duck in the early morning light. I expected one to swim out from the cattails along the bank, but it splashed down suddenly in the water next to me and jolted me out of my quiet reverie! Later, I was pleasantly surprised to find a female northern shoveler and a male blue-winged teal swimming in close proximity to the newly-arrived wood duck. What a great find! Both the shoveler and the teal are rare visitors to our creek!

Once the early morning light started to change, and no longer had that soft golden glow, I wandered through the woods adjacent to the creek and headed over to a nearby preserve where I hoped to find a loon. I had never seen a loon here in Michigan, but knew that one had recently been spotted on the lake at the preserve and hoped I’d get a picture!

It took me awhile to find the loon. It’s not a very colorful bird, and it does have a habit of swimming rather low in the water. Even on a relatively small body of water, like the one I was visiting, loons can be difficult to spot.

**The painted turtles were out in droves!**

While I had my camera focused on the loon, something in my peripheral vision distracted me. It was an Osprey flying towards me on the left with a good-sized fish in its talons!! I turned to take its picture and didn’t have time to change the settings on my camera. I just started shooting as fast as I could and hoping for the best! In photography, this method of shooting is often called ‘spray and pray!’ Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s always worth a try.

**My ‘spray and pray’ shot of the Osprey with the fish!**

As I continued walking around the lake, I was delighted to find two great blue herons in relatively close proximity to one other! I’ve never seen two blue herons at the same time except at a rookery. A short time later, I spotted a third!

One of the birds that never takes me by surprise is the Canada goose! It’s absolutely everywhere, but quite easy to overlook as a desirable photography subject. Even the most mundane of subjects, like the Canada goose, though, can make for a beautiful photograph given the right circumstances and a little bit of ingenuity. If nothing else, Canada geese are great subjects for practicing one’s photography skills; they’re not hard to find, they’re easier to photograph than smaller, flightier birds, and they really are stunning in their own right.

**Canada Goose in peaceful repose only a few feet from where I was taking pictures of the wood duck**

**A busy little muskrat taking a snack break along the edge of Asylum Lake**

On this particularly warm spring day, I also saw swans, turtles, grackles, and one very busy muskrat chewing away on something tasty; totally oblivious to my presence. Up in the trees surrounding the lake, there was a musical assortment of robins, chickadees, bluebirds, red-winged blackbirds, golden-crowned kinglets, yellow-rumped warblers, and one little brown creeper scurrying up a tree.

**Little** **Brown Creeper** **scurrying up a tree**

I always head out on these picture walks wondering what kinds of surprises I’ll find or who I’ll meet along the way. Yesterday, my best surprise was the osprey with the fish, but the funniest surprise was the dog named Norman, and the story of his name. I’m still smiling!

Hungry for Spring

February 24, 2022

Young Trumpeter Swan flying through a snow squall

As I sit writing this piece, long before sunrise, on another cold and windy February day, I am contemplating the advisability of even attempting a picture walk. The weather forecast calls for 15 to 25 mile an hour winds with gusts over 40! On the other hand, temperatures might exceed 40 degrees —quite balmy compared to the below zero wind chill conditions I was faced with the other day! Usually, I can put on enough layers to stay warm, even on the coldest of days, but strong winds make for a much bigger challenge.

Blue Jay stirring up snow in a pine tree

Female Northern Cardinal and a Northern Flicker weathering another winter storm

Some Great Blue Herons will stay here throughout the winter, but many more will head south

Most days, I’m up for that challenge but, I must admit, I’m growing weary of it all. These long winter days, where I have to plan for so many weather contingencies, and have to wear so many layers, are weakening my resolve—especially during the past two years of this pandemic where we haven’t been able to venture far from home. The birds in my backyard are quite tired of me begging for a photo shoot.

Two of my backyard birds: A Dark-eyed Junco and a White-throated Sparrow

A Cedar Waxwing and an American Goldfinch add a splash of color to a mostly color-free landscape!

For the next few days, though, my backyard birds can take a break while I babysit my grand-dog on the opposite side of the state. There are lots of new places to explore here and once the sun is up, I expect I’ll venture out in spite of the wind and in spite of the cold! I’d much rather be outside searching for the possibility of something new than sitting here on the couch.

Some people believe that the Robin is a “harbinger of spring”, but large numbers of them stay here all winter feasting on berries.

These two winter visitors were a first for me: a Horned Lark and a Snow Bunting!

After writing those first few paragraphs, I did, indeed venture out– first to a nearby nature center and then to a nearby park.

Black-capped Chickadees are delightful little birds that can be found in Michigan all year round.

White-breasted Nuthatch and a female Northern Cardinal

I found the usual assortment of birds at the nature center—chickadees, finches, cardinals, nuthatches and goldfinches, but it was a brand-new setting! When I arrived at my second destination, I really hit the jackpot! Beaudette Park in Pontiac, Michigan, had a very large pond of open water and it was teeming with a wide variety of waterfowl, some of which I’d never seen before!

Some Sandhill Cranes stay here all year long

This time of year, it’s highly unusual to find open water in Michigan. Most lakes and ponds are frozen over. This particular body of water had the ubiquitous array of mallards, swans and geese, but it also had mergansers, buffleheads, redheads, ring-necked ducks, goldeneyes and canvasbacks!! It was the canvasbacks I’d never seen before. I couldn’t stop taking pictures!

Male Canvasback at Beaudette Park in Pontiac, Michigan

Male Hooded Merganser and a Female Common Merganser at Beaudette Park

Days later, I was still sorting through all the hundreds of pictures I took that day!

Pileated Woodpecker and a Downy Woodpecker

Mallard Ducks are everywhere and they offer endless opportunities for interesting photographs!

In spite of all the inherent beauty to be found in a picture of freshly fallen snow and a colorful bird here and there, I am more than ready for the arrival of spring; ready to be free of these bulky winter clothes, grey skies, and frigid temperatures. I’m beyond hungry for the colors to return, for the sweet smell of a newly mowed lawn, and for the sheer delight of a warm patch of sun on my bare skin!

I am more than ready to shed these bulky winter clothes and trade this colorless landscape for green leaves and spring flowers!

Lessons Learned

March 28, 2021

Sometimes, when I’m out on a picture walk, I think about all the things I’ve learned along the way that I didn’t know when I started out on this photography journey; things that can’t be found in the instructional manuals, YouTube videos, or ‘Dummy’ books; things like patience and planning.

Photo by a fellow photographer, Bill Krasean
Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery, Mattawan, Michigan

This past February, when it was still bone-chilling cold, I stood outside in shin-deep snow for the better part of two days on the off-chance that a leucistic Robin would re-appear in my friend’s backyard. It was a marginally idiotic thing to do given the unlikelihood that this particular robin would return to this particular yard and land anywhere remotely close to where I was standing! As far as I could tell, there was no compelling reason for him to return any time soon.

Black Crow on a snowy winter day in February

Leucism (pronounced loo-kiz-em or loo-siz-em) is a partial loss of pigmentation, which can make an animal have white or blotchy colored skin, hair, or feathers. The leucistic Robin on my radar that day was completely white except for a small patch of color on the top of its head.

White-throated Sparrow and a Fox Sparrow

At some point during my second day of waiting, the elusive white robin landed high in a nearby tree and later flew to the edge of a neighbor’s roof! He appeared to be drinking water from the eavestrough and every time his head bobbed up to swallow, I tried to get a picture. After an excessively long bout of drinking, the thirsty bird stood quietly on the edge of the gutter so that I could get this clear, uncluttered shot. My patience had finally paid off!

The elusive white Robin on a cold, sunny day in February

The other thing instructional manuals sometimes fail to mention is the importance of planning ahead; not the kind of planning that involves decisions about what to wear on a cold, snowy day of picture-taking, or what mittens work best in sub-freezing temperatures, but what essential items you must have in your pockets!

The Great Blue Heron stayed all winter and the Red-winged Blackbirds returned on the 1st of March

Mallards stay all winter and bravely cope with our unpredictable Michigan weather.

A few years ago, in June of 2018, I had been out on a picture walk all morning when a fellow birder alerted me to a rare Prothonotary Warbler flitting around in a bush near the edge of a small pond. I had never seen this particular bird before and really wanted a picture! Once I spotted its bright yellow body bouncing around from branch to branch, I held my camera as steady as possible and pressed the shutter– but there was no familiar ‘clickity, click, click’ of a camera taking multiple shots in rapid succession. My battery was utterly and completely dead!!

The Northern Pintails and the Redheaded Ducks were migrating through Michigan during February and March

On a very unseasonably warm day in March, the turtles came out to sun themselves.
The turtle in the middle, with the distinctive yellow throat, is a Blanding’s Turtle.
It is a ‘species of concern’ in Michigan

An American Coot and a Greater Scaup enjoying one of the open ponds at the Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery

In a state of frantic desperation, I ran to my car, plopped the camera on the passenger seat, and raced home for another battery, hoping I’d return in time to get a picture of the warbler! In my hasty drive home, I turned a corner much too quickly and my well-loved camera with its attached telephoto lens went flying to the floor!!

My favorite Grackle picture
Taken on a warm day in early March

The best I could do was to continue on my mission, fetch the battery, and hope that the camera wasn’t permanently damaged. Forty minutes later, I arrived back at the pond and searched for the tiny yellow bird once again. Not only was he still flitting around, my camera had survived the fall and I was able to capture the moment!! If only I had carried that extra battery in my pocket to begin with!

The Prothonotary Warbler that I almost missed!

The other lesson, if you can call it that, is practice. Over the last four or five years, I have taken thousands upon thousands of pictures. I absolutely do not need another robin, another frog, or another monarch for my ‘collection’; but every shot I take is an opportunity to learn something new, either about the creature I’m trying to photograph or about the camera settings I’m trying to use. I don’t have any ‘lifer’ birds or bugs, that I specifically go looking for; I’m pretty much content with whatever I find wherever I find it. In fact, that’s the very best part: finding the most extraordinary things in the least extraordinary of places.

The much-loved Sandhill Cranes returned in March to the delight of many!

I know there is much to be said about the importance of reading the owner’s manuals and studying the instructional videos before venturing forth on any new skill set, but the very best lessons, the ones that have stuck with me the longest, have been the ones I learned along the way by trial and error.

Photography as Meditation

December 7, 2020

The idea of photography as meditation has been mulling around in my head for quite some time now. The more I go out to take pictures, the more it feels like a form of meditation.

Dark-eyed Junco– Well into the end of November and the beginning of December, we were getting relatively warm, sunny days that were perfect for all-day photography outings

It was so warm (50 degrees or more) in late November that even the Autumn Meadowhawks were still flitting about and the Painted Turtles were still out sunbathing!

Meditation is commonly described as a “practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.”

Black-capped Chickadee– Four days after the warm, sunny pictures of dragonflies and turtles shown above, it snowed!

Male and Female Cardinal during a brief but spectacular snowfall on November 24th.

Whenever I arrive at a woods, a field or a pond to take pictures, a sense of calm washes over me. I quickly become so focused on looking for interesting things to photograph, that there’s absolutely no room in my brain for any of the usual clutter. Three hours later, I emerge from my ‘trance’, relaxed and ready to face the world. It seems a lot like what I think of as a meditative state.

On another unusually warm November day, I watched the Sandhill Cranes float down to the waiting cornfields

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Sandhill Cranes flock to the open cornfields this time of year. They are a sight (and a sound) to behold!

Much has been written about the therapeutic effects of time spent in nature, but I had never seen anything written about the therapeutic effects of nature photography or, more specifically, ‘photography as meditation’. I decided to do a little research to see if anyone else had come up with the same idea. Surprisingly, there were entire books on the subject!

Female Mallard in the early morning light

Male Mallard and a Female Mallard Hybrid going head to head

Trooper Swan– a cross between a Whooper Swan (pronounced ‘hooper’) and a Trumpeter Swan

“For many people, photography serves as a form of meditation; a way to separate themselves from their stressful lives. Meditation and photography have much in common: both are based in the present moment, both require complete focus, and both are most successful when the mind is free from distracting thoughts.” (Photography as Meditation by Torsten Andreas Hoffman)

Male Mallard conducting an orchestra of Trumpeter Swans at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

Male Mallard with a green head and one with a blue head

Female Mallard, possibly leucistic — Leucism is a partial loss of pigmentation which causes white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticles, but not the eyes.

“Both photography and meditation require an ability to focus steadily on what is happening in order to see more clearly. Whether you are paying mindful attention to the breath as you sit in meditation or whether you are composing an image in a viewfinder, you find yourself hovering before a fleeting, tantalizing reality.” (Stephen Batchelor, Yale University Press, Meditation and Photography)

A well-camouflaged Wilson’s Snipe who was migrating through Michigan

I had tried ‘regular meditation’ once or twice before, where I would sit quietly and calmly for a short period of time and try to focus my attention on only one thing, but I never mastered the art. On a picture walk, though, I can stay focused for hours and there’s absolutely no room in my brain for the worries of the day to intrude— quite a godsend, I’d say, given this horrifying pandemic and the deplorable state of our government.

White-breasted Nuthatch and a Tufted Titmouse

A picture walk continues to be the perfect form of meditation and the perfect antidote to today’s chaos.

Standing Still

April 9, 2020

My picture walks began a few years ago as a way to combine a little exercise with a little picture taking. Over time, the walks have become less and less about exercise and more and more about picture taking—mostly because I stop so often to take a look that I never get very far!

Greater Yellowlegs and a Tri-colored Heron

On my walks to the various preserves and rookeries, I often see other photographers who have picked a spot to take pictures and they never move, preferring instead, to stay in one place forever! I used to think this would be an incredibly boring thing to do, that I would miss so much if I just stayed in one place. But, over time, I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of just standing still.

Sandhill Crane with offspring (called a Colt)

Sandhill Crane Colt and White Egret nestling

That’s not to say that I have ever parked myself in one spot for hours on end, but I have, on several occasions, stood in one place for a good hour or so. I have found that by parking myself in one place for a while, I become part of the landscape; the birds and the butterflies no longer notice me and go about their business as if I weren’t there. The elusive Kingfisher, which has been extremely hard for me to capture, will land on a nearby branch unaware of my presence; the Black-crowned Night Heron will perch on a fence right in front of me, and the Roseate Spoonbill, totally oblivious to my presence, will continue fishing less than 20 feet away!

Roseate Spoonbill and a Black-crowned Night Heron

When I do stand still for a while and just observe what is going on around me, I find it very calming. I am so absorbed in what I might find, that it’s easy to forget life’s worries.

Male Four-spotted Pennant and a Female Needham’s Skimmer

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks and a White Egret

With the recent introduction of this deadly coronavirus into our lives, we are, as an entire planet, collectively standing still. We can look upon this time of isolation and social distancing as a colossal state of boredom, frustration and angst, or as an opportunity to more closely observe the life around us and to take stock of what’s truly important.

There is much that is beautiful to be found.

Be still. Be safe. Be well.

A Common Denominator

April 2, 2020

We are nearly three weeks into isolating ourselves as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Mel and I have been staying at home (our Florida rental for two more weeks that is) except for our daily walks and our brief but infrequent trips to the grocery store. Our walks have mostly been to nature preserves and wildlife areas that are not commonly visited by others, and for most of those walks, we have taken our cameras– which is how we have amassed so many pictures in a relatively short period of time!

Juvenile Little Blue Heron and an adult Little Blue Heron

Fortunately, photography is a hobby that is serving us well during this time of forced isolation. Even if we become restricted to the parameters of our own backyard, we will still find things to photograph–especially Mel with his macro photography!

One of Florida’s many alligators sunning itself in the grass.

Adult Black-crowned Night Heron and a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron

Little Blue Heron coming in for a landing and a Glossy Ibis taking off

One of the many benefits of this nature photography hobby has been its therapeutic effects. No matter how anxious or worried I am about the overwhelming consequences of this pandemic that we are all suffering through, once I start focusing on the birds and bugs around me, I am almost immediately calmed. All my concentration is focused on the subject at hand and whether the settings on my camera will be correct. But, even before the COVID-19, my picture walks had proven to be quite the magical elixir for restoring a sense of balance, tranquility and joy to my world.

A very young Sandhill Crane ‘baby’, called a ‘colt’

Limpkin and a Great Blue Heron, both of whom fish along the edges of ponds

An added benefit of this nature photography hobby has come from sharing my pictures with others, By sharing the things I have seen, I am afforded the opportunity to stay connected to others. The natural world is our common denominator. It gives us a common language with which to converse and to find joy. Pictures are just another way to communicate that joy– particularly during these very uncertain and heart-wrenching times.

Stay safe out there!