Friday, December 10, 2010

Photo finish Friday: The Birds

Pigeons don't get much respect, so there's a flock of them I'll give a nod to today. They hang out in the neighborhood and spend nights on a power line behind the house. Each morning at dawn, they suddenly spring into flight and do this aerial ballet that lasts for several minutes.

Watching them, you wonder again how they manage to move as one through the sky - a squadron turning first this way and then that way, disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. Then all at once they come in for a landing again, dropping back onto the power line, and the performance is over.

The light before sunrise is too weak to get a good shot of them, but you can get an idea from the blur they leave in the camera. To complete the picture, all you have to do is imagine the fluttering sound of all those wings as they swoop overhead.

9 comments:

  1. A squadron is the perfect description. I like them except when they are aerial bombarding me.

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  2. Over here? They are a bloody pest!!!!

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  3. Good pic. And good for your for showing pigeons some respect. They have as much right to exist as anything else.

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  4. I was watching pigeons swoop around while I was waiting to get in the sushi place on Wednesday. We've got a fair little flock of doves who consistently visit our back yard.

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  5. It never fails to amaze me. Like some unseen choreographer is at work.

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  6. It's fun to watch pigeons. But, do you know that Chicago has an ordinance against feeding them and there are signs reminding folks of the crime all along the lakeshore.

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  7. Here, we have pigeons, doves, hummers, grackles, lots of quail, Canadian geese, finches, etc., but the squadrons contain only the geese with their noisy honking as they come in for a landing or take off from the pond on the golf course. Nice pic.

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  8. David, that sounds a little too Hitchcock.

    Cheyenne, like I say, a bad rep.

    Leah, just me and my bleeding heart.

    Charles, doves we get, too; their coo-cooing is so familiar; we had them on the farm when I was a boy.

    Patti, I believe there are scientific theories to account for this behavior, but I think they're still just theories.

    Sage, I've seen "don't feed pigeons" signs in places, too.

    Oscar, we have all those except the geese; aren't quail comical?

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  9. About the only bird left around here in the winter. Too cold and too much snow for anything else --pigions are tough birds. We have had 25 inches of snow so far this winter most wild things are gone or holed up. I am already looking forward to spring.
    -N-

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