BIRD WATCHING. PHOTOGRAPHY.

When a Cacophony of Birds Took My Attention

It wasn’t what I was expecting or looking for

All of a sudden it got loud. Like really loud. It was almost like a screaming sound just that it wasn’t. It was the call of hundreds of birds getting together. They were sitting in the only tree that had lost all its leaves already.

I was out on a late afternoon walk looking for the cranes I heard they’d come together in this spot every evening. But the first birds I saw were domesticated ones. As I parked the car at the edge of town, I must have passed a small farm with chickens and saw uniquely colored ducks.

They were already making a sound of themselves. But nothing compared to what I was about to witness.

I began to walk and didn’t even bother to put my camera back in my bag. I kept it in and on hand. Always ready to shoot. Oh yeah, did I mention I took all these photographs with the manual focus?

Yes, you know it already, the automatic focus on my lens broke. But sometimes it’s good if we’re forced into compromises and experiments. We can learn from it.

And here we go. I just turned away my attention from the domesticated birds when I spotted these brightly shining swans.

I chose to turn off the main trail and followed a path covered in grass.

Fall has just begun but there were already a few signs of this colorful season.

Also, the skies were pretty. With some clouds in the air, the sunset was going to be spectacular. But instead of pointing the camera up, I captured the mirrored reflections in one of the lakes instead.

I surrounded the first lake and decided to take one picture with my wide-angle lens to get the whole beauty of the evening in the frame.

While many tiny, tiny frogs were running across the grassy trail, I also looked out for other objects worthy to capture. This mushroom I almost stepped on but spotted at the last moment.

And then I saw something very disturbing. Lots and lots of white stuff on the bushes and plants on the side of the path. It looked to me like someone had emptied paint out here.

But why?

It just didn’t make sense. Nothing added up for me.

Until I turned around and started hearing those birds. I surely did spot the cranes and their flocks, the ones I was actually here for. But right now a different bird species had stolen my attention.

Countless starlings were covering a naked tree. It had lost all its leaves and was now taken over but hundreds and hundreds of these birds.

Many but not all European starlings do migrate. Starlings are known to gather in immense flocks during fall and winter. And it was what I was witnessing now. These birds were incredibly chatty. It was loud. Like really loud.

And as soon as I was getting closer to the tree they were sitting on, they moved one tree further down. I wished I could have left them alone but they were sitting on the trees right next to the trail and these trails in the nature park had no other ways around them. There were just reeds and canals on the sides.

I had to walk down that way.

At least now I knew where that “paint” was coming from. The white stuff on the plants on the ground was clearly guano. Bird poop.

And so I continued my walk listening to the continuous cacophony of starlings.

And another walk out in nature is coming to an end with a memory card full of pictures.

“Don’t be afraid of being outnumbered. Eagles fly alone. Pigeons flock together.” — unknown

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