My mom was always on the move.
She couldn't sit still even when she was sitting still.
When I was a kid, she used to put on her favorite ABBA record and sit on the couch for hours, rocking back and forth to the music, like she was a human metronome.
She said she got that need to move from her mother and that I had gotten it from her.
Every day when I go to the Wetlands, I pass photographers, cameras mounted on tripods, seated in the grass, waiting. They wait for the shot. They don't rely on luck. They're still and I know I've messed up plenty of their shots by startling the birds with the crunch of gravel under the tires of my car.
When I go to the Wetlands, I don't sit. I drive or sometimes walk. I move. I pick cameras with good auto settings because I know if I stumble across the perfect moment, I won't have time to mess with the camera settings.
But today, I told myself, if I found the right spot, where there weren't other cars or people, that I would stop. I would turn the car off and I would sit.
And I found that spot near where I had spotted some Hooded mergansers the other day. They were gone today and I wondered if they had just been passing through. But there was plenty still to take pictures of.
It was a crisp morning, cold. The air felt like it was elbows, sharp points and stinging. But still, I leaned out the open window and I took a long, deep breath and then another and another.
I found the Great blue heron and a Belted kingfisher, sitting in separate trees, but still only a few feet from each other. They sit like this nearly everyday. And as I took their pictures, the kingfisher jerked his head behind him and all of sudden, there exploded from the tall grass a mass, a swarm of female grackles, spotted here and there with a male Redwing blackbird.
There were so many and they were so fast.
When groups of birds fly together, even groups with a mixture of types, of grackles and Redwing blackbirds, of ibises and egrets, they never simply fly from point A to point B. They ride the wind. They dance. They spiral. They dive. They soar. They are synchronized in a way that requires no practice. They only have to be.
A moment later, they settled again, disappearing once more into the grass.
And all was quiet.
She couldn't sit still even when she was sitting still.
When I was a kid, she used to put on her favorite ABBA record and sit on the couch for hours, rocking back and forth to the music, like she was a human metronome.
She said she got that need to move from her mother and that I had gotten it from her.
Every day when I go to the Wetlands, I pass photographers, cameras mounted on tripods, seated in the grass, waiting. They wait for the shot. They don't rely on luck. They're still and I know I've messed up plenty of their shots by startling the birds with the crunch of gravel under the tires of my car.
When I go to the Wetlands, I don't sit. I drive or sometimes walk. I move. I pick cameras with good auto settings because I know if I stumble across the perfect moment, I won't have time to mess with the camera settings.
But today, I told myself, if I found the right spot, where there weren't other cars or people, that I would stop. I would turn the car off and I would sit.
And I found that spot near where I had spotted some Hooded mergansers the other day. They were gone today and I wondered if they had just been passing through. But there was plenty still to take pictures of.
It was a crisp morning, cold. The air felt like it was elbows, sharp points and stinging. But still, I leaned out the open window and I took a long, deep breath and then another and another.
I found the Great blue heron and a Belted kingfisher, sitting in separate trees, but still only a few feet from each other. They sit like this nearly everyday. And as I took their pictures, the kingfisher jerked his head behind him and all of sudden, there exploded from the tall grass a mass, a swarm of female grackles, spotted here and there with a male Redwing blackbird.
There were so many and they were so fast.
When groups of birds fly together, even groups with a mixture of types, of grackles and Redwing blackbirds, of ibises and egrets, they never simply fly from point A to point B. They ride the wind. They dance. They spiral. They dive. They soar. They are synchronized in a way that requires no practice. They only have to be.
A moment later, they settled again, disappearing once more into the grass.
And all was quiet.
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