World Bird Wednesday LXXXVI

Flying the Friendly Skies

I suppose everyone who raises a Dslr to their eye in hopes of capturing a bird in the wild will one day, perhaps in a fit of boredom, level their steely gaze on a dragonfly. I am no different. Chasing bugs to get their pictures is about as strange as I get, as strange as you can get perhaps. Couple that with the fact that dragonfly love is the most complicated and time intensive study one can take on and if your unlucky enough to get hooked on the color, vagaries, and alien good looks of these bugs to boot, you too will be considered one strange bird indeed.
   How naked is nature? Sex, death, and the fight for survival are all played out in raw theater. Look carefully and you will see the awful and the sublime living closely and improbably like poorly matched neighbors. When your looking for one, you will sometimes unfortunately find the other.
    Case in point. Suzanne and I were finishing up a lovely breakfast out at the Pine river when we spotted a young bald eagle cruising low over the water. When the bird returned a few seconds later we scurried out on the deck and were greeted with the sound of ducks quacking frantically. I grabbed the camera and bolted for the steps leading to the river bank.

    I guess it doesn't get much plainer than this. There's a kind of hard truth here that defies any attempt to anthropomorphise goodness, resourcefulness, or courage where it does not belong.
    Our eagle did not consume it's catch but dropped it back in the river and flew off in search of a more substantial meal. There is a one legged duckling swimming hard on the Pine river tonight.
    Just another random act of survival.

"Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
                                                                               William Yeats

With this installment I am concluding the 86 week run of World Bird Wednesday. The Pine River Review will reemerge on a semi-regular basis. Take care birders!

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