November 23, 2017

Green Jay

Green Jay

Altimira Oriole

Altimira Oriole

It began as a rather routine out-of-state excursion with the camera but ended up being one of those trips where you get home, exhale, and say “at least nobody died.”  Except in this case, someone did.  They say these things happen in threes.  First came a message that my physician, the General Practitioner to whom I’ve gone for forty years, has died after a battle with cancer.  This was a warm, caring man who became a personal friend.  Every year when I went for my physical we’d spend the first half of a leisurely hour catching up on family and life.  We’d talk birds though he wasn’t really a birder, and he’d remind me about his crush on Martina Hingis though he wasn’t a tennis player.  Not your ordinary, harried, buttoned up, down to business doctor.  When I saw him last year he was the picture of health.  Sometimes cancer happens fast.

On the second day my cell phone died.  No drops, no dunks, just crickets and a blank screen, a first for me though I’m told I’m to be thankful that it worked without fail for five full years.  When realization hit, my first thought was “pay phone.”  What’s a “pay phone,” right?  Funny, but then Elton John’s “Rocket Man” started playing in my head, and I spent the day feeling lost in space with no way to contact anyone for help.

Then, at 60 mph along an expressway on my way to a bird blind I have always wanted to visit, something blew off a passing pickup truck.  I ducked reflexively and saw it fly over.  Several seconds passed, then whatever it was came down heavily on the roof of my rental car.  Large dent.  Luckily it missed my windshield and no one else died.

So, with all this on my mind I arrive at the blind, get comfortable, and set up the camera.  For me, many years now into birds with camera, a photo blind at a water hole or feeding station is part office, part church, and mostly an escape from reality.  It’s a chance to enter what’s known in athletics as “the zone.”  The entrance to the zone is at the intersection of intense focus and unfettered creativity where there are no outside distractions and hours pass like minutes.

Happily, though this is a public blind in a popular state park, I have it to myself, undoubtedly due to an overcast with intermittent sprinkles.  Birds have to eat, this is their breakfast time, and the soft light is perfect.  I am not expecting anything rare, but I am returning to the very first out-of-home-area hotspot we visited some forty years ago when we decided to expand our interest in birding into an avocation.  The Rio Grande is less than a mile behind my left shoulder, and the common birds here are exotic anywhere else in the country--electric colors, iconic calls, and evocative memories.

The Green Jays, as you’d suspect from their tribe’s infamous reputation as neighborhood watchdogs, are the first birds in.  There seem to be two groups, a pack of six or seven and then three that hang together and avoid the larger clique, perhaps siblings still together just past their second summer.  There are many green and yellow birds, but no other in North America that complements these colors with blue.  Even in the soft light of this dreary morning, it is easy to blow out the ventral yellows or underexpose the gamut of blues which runs from navy around the lores to pastel on the nape, and it doesn’t help that jays are grab-and-go feeders that never land in the same place on the same perch twice.  My goals for the jays are flight shots and raised blue crests.  Try as I might I cannot establish patterns which would allow pre-focus, but no worries.  I have all day.

I hear the Great Kisdadees’ signature, eponymous three syllable call the moment I leave the car, but their arrival is several minutes behind the jays.  Though their ventral yellow is brighter yet deeper than the jays’, it is easier to accurately capture because the kiskadees are darker birds overall and exposure can be based on the rich, warm russets of their flight feathers and undertail coverts.  I get my favorite shot of the entire day, a flight shot, as one of these big, querulous flycatchers banks away from the blind, tipping to expose the belly, vent, and undertail to the camera.  The primaries on the far wing are fully extended, stiff, and arrow straight, but those on the close, elevated wing are loose and cupped under, the tips hidden, certainly nothing I saw while seated in the overwing row on my airline flight from Arizona.

As the overcast lifts, a patch of light flashes across the periphery of the blind’s window, but it is not sunlight.  It is burnished copper with splashes of gold, and the bird I’ve been hearing but not yet seen lands on a snag so close I have to zoom in for the first time.  I’ve heard the Altamira Oriole’s song likened to a small boy learning how to whistle—the notes are low but clear, slightly ascending but attenuated, and the whole thing is rather tentative, as if the singer is a little unsure of the proper phrasing and not at all sure he wants to have anyone hear him.  A male, no problem seeing him of course, as he is less flighty than the jays and flycatchers, his tangerine and ebony at once more uniformly darker yet smashingly brighter than theirs against the dark greens of the scrub thorn forest.  The camera loves him.

Woodpeckers, titmice, thrashers, and other flycatchers come and go, there is a surprise visit from a Clay-colored Thrush, now an established breeder along the lower Rio Grande, and once I think I hear the squeaky and incessant staccato of a pygmy-owl.  Perhaps I am not delusional, as something periodically sets off the raucous squawking and cackling of the resident Plain Chachalacas.  Maybe a Bobcat if not the owl, but neither shows itself on this day.

If I were keeping score, this day in this blind would be a ten—a steady ebb and flow of iconic and photogenic birds attracted to a food and water source surrounded by perches at eye level, an overcast to keep temperatures down and preclude the harsh light of midday, and no foot traffic in and out to disturb the comfort and serenity of my photographic zone.  The expressway incident and the dead cell phone do not cross my mind for eight hours until I return to the car to leave and see the dent as I unlock the door.  I must admit, though, my doctor’s death is lurking along the edges of my mind.  Our relationship was one I will never duplicate.

On the plane back to Phoenix I slip quickly back into reality.  I slide into an aisle seat next to a mother accompanied by her teenage son who sits by the window.  He is swathed in blankets, obviously experiencing discomfort, and the catheter inserted into his abdomen is connected to a bag of fluids by her side.  They are on their way home to San Jose from MD Anderson in Houston.  Sometimes cancer is random.  Despite his pain, she is bravely ecstatic.  He finished chemo yesterday, while I was sitting with my camera in a bird blind, and they will be home for Thanksgiving.  She has her fingers crossed.  My dark glasses hide my tears.  I show them some images on the back of my camera.  We escape again, together, until the plane touches down in Phoenix.
Great Kiskadee
Great Kiskadee