I present you a stick
And what a great stick it is. Heron courtship and nest-building is one of my favorite activities to watch. It is very ritualistic as the male flies off to collect materials for the nest and bring it back to the female for approval and placement. In their behaviors as he returns, you can almost imagine the male speaking “honey, how about this one?”
Each peek into the social interactions of wildlife gives us one more clue at how we are not so different in many aspects. One more clue to the magnitude of how little we really understand.
I gave this image a monochromatic tonality for simplification. The herons and the sticks become quite isolated from any color distractions. The story is completely about those two elements alone.
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Indian Paintbrush
Just an image for this post, not much else. This is a rendering of an image I made not long ago where I wanted to add further simplicity to a very cluttered scene. The end result – Indian Paintbrush looking rather … painterly.
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Taraxacum... just a weed
“What would the world be, once bereft,
of wet and wildness? Let them be left.
O let them be left; wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889
I have always found certain words of human language and how they are used peculiar. I have often wondered… “Do dolphins, whales, or bonobo’s use such terms?” One in particular … “weed.” I remember when I visited Germany there were these beautiful flowers along most of the roadsides – I never did get to identify them. I wouldn’t hesitate photographing a field of them if I had the chance. But when I asked a colleague what they were, the reply was “Oh they are just weeds, they grow everywhere.” I am sure foreign visitors to a chemical free US suburban neighborhood might ask the same of the yellow flowers scattered everywhere.
We seem to have a term for anything that is in a place that annoys us or that we don’t have a need for – weed, pest, rodent, wasteland. They are used as if they are scientific classifications, yet they have no such notoriety. Yet it is amazing how willingly such terms are commonly adopted references to specific species across languages, countries, continents. I can’t help but wonder – what if we just left things be as Mr. Hopkins so eloquently wrote.
Of course in many cases we cannot, the natural order of things often doesn’t anticipate the wild card of mankind and “progress.” We frequently need to fix what we have broken, but often don’t do such a good job of that either. This photograph captured my desire to just let things be and appreciate something for what it is.
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It has been quite awhile since I have encountered a porcupine. This guy just happened to be right in the middle of the path I was taking looking for wildflowers just west of Mackinac City in Northern Michigan. It was a morning when I wanted to hike light and simply went out with my 200 mm macro lens only. I suppose it was bound to happen. Whenever I have everything with me, it is rare that I have such encounters. I think it is the same law that makes something happen as soon as you close the zipper on your camera bag after packing things up.
Porcupine Munchin'
I think everyone would agree that a 200 mm macro lens is not the best suited lens for porcupines. I could just imagine having to explain to the Urgent Care nurse why I ended up with quills lodged in my face. My car wasn’t too far back on the trail where I had my 200-400 and teleconverters, which I was wishing for by my side. I should have paid more attention to how Luke Skywalker used the Force to get that light saber from afar into his hands. Come to think of it, the Force would be quite handy when it comes to nature photography. You could will a wildflower to stop blowing in the wind, keep all the heavy lenses in your car, or use mind control on that grizzly bear… “You don’t really want to eat me.” I suppose I am getting off track.
Anyway, this porcupine seemed to be pretty focused on nibbling these plants that were along the sides of this trail. There were plenty of plants, and this guy seemed intent on eating every last one of them. I had some time to walk back to the car and retrieve the proper lens to photograph him. (her?). Sure enough, I returned – he looked a little fatter, but I got a few images.
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