The Ones I Like List of 2009 – A Countdown [#5]
© 2009 Katya Horner
indigo – This past spring I was a birder for second. I loved it. I bought books. I joined websites. I adopted the nickname Western Tanager. I was only an outing in camouflage and a bird-calling class away from growing feathers myself. If it weren’t for a busy work schedule, I would have probably joined the whooping crane migration northward in early April. I was that serious.
Indigo was taken at the High Island Rookery last March. I had rented a Canon 300mm, f/2.8 lens and coupled it with a Canon 2X Extender that day, and I was all set to photograph some nesting Roseate Spoonbills. If you’ve never seen a “Rosy,” you are missing something. All pink and spoonbill-ish, it is similar to, but far more interesting than a flamingo. If I were a hipster and into plastic garden decorations, I’d certainly go with the plastic pink rosy over the plastic pink flamingo. The choice would be endearing and irreverent, and, by association, I too would be endearing and irreverent. (Note to self: Explore the ins and outs of converting to hipster as well as cost of manufacturing lawn ornaments.) But this post isn’t about Rosies; it’s about Indigo Buntings. So let’s move on, shall we?
Indigo Buntings are beautiful, delicate birds. The way that they and their more colorful siblings, Painted Buntings, pose gracefully on branches makes them seem as though they’ve just leapt out of an Audubon lithograph. I had never even heard of an Indigo Bunting prior to that visit to High Island, and I was very lucky to have come across one that day. A series of decisions and unplanned events put me in the right space at the right time, and like a gift from St. Francis of Assisi himself, one flew across my path and landed on a branch, easily viewed through my lens. It was breathtaking. It was the acme of my birding career. I stood there agog. Sadly, like all things fleeting, like my tenure as a birder itself, the moment passed at warp speed. Thankfully, I’m a Level 46 Canon 5D, Mark II gunslinger. That bird didn’t stand a chance when it came to evading my camera’s shutter. Not a chance.
I chose indigo for the #5 slot on my The Ones I Like List of 2009 because it’s just so different from any other bird photo that I’ve taken, and if you know my photography, you know I’ve taken many, many bird photos. There’s something classically beautiful, yet simple about the image. I’d love to take full credit, but I can’t. This was nothing more than quick draw photography. Right place, right time, right equipment. And then there was that prayer to St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Wild Birds…
