Spring has finally arrived and it couldn't have come sooner. Well, actually it could have. It could have come ALOT sooner! This winter felt rough to say the least, and it wasn't just because of the frozen hellscape that is Saskatchewan during those months. It felt difficult mentally. What started as some run of the mill seasonal depression morphed into some good old full on depression, and try as I might it was difficult for me to get excited about much creatively. But as spring started to arrive...and then disappear...and arrive again...and take a break, and then finally triumphantly arrive once, more things have started to feel better. With that nice weather comes something that has started bringing me joy over the last couple years: photographing birds.
I never thought I would become a birder (an I still wouldn't call myself one quite yet) but I find it very relaxing. It's just nice to be out of the house, in some nice weather, and putting all my focus into this one subject. It calms my mind and for a few minutes really helps me forget about all the other stresses and anxieties going on in my life. Fortunately for me, this year so far there has been plenty of wildlife in my back yard already. Last year my wife noticed that a flicker had made a nest in a knot hole in the tree in our back yard. A mated pair had made a nest, laid eggs, and we got to watch them come to life and eventually fly away. A couple weeks ago we were happy to see they had come back. The knot hole is right outside our bedroom window, which makes for a nice thing to do in the morning: wake up, feed the cats, check on the birds.
Our other favourite little guys are the partridges(which we still just call "the chickens" because we originally thought they were prairie chickens) that have become regular visitor over the last year. Again, a mated pair nested close by and we think that because our yard is so closed off they felt safe bringing their flock into yard to spend whole days chasing shade in our garden and in our trees. They would come back over the winter occasionally and huddle up together during the cold nights. Unfortunately the only photos I got of that were dark, grainy, smartphone images that didn't look like anything. Watching these birds raise their flock of (I think) eight babies, was honeslty a highlight of our summer. That's why this week we were heartbroken to find that the male of the couple had flown into one of our windows and didn't make it. I never thought I would be so sad for a bird that occasionally visits my yard, but here I am mourning the loss of a chicken and feeling bad for it's chicken widow. We are hoping even though the male isn't around anymore there will still be babies hatching and the mother will bring them to visit. They've become like pets that don't really want anything to do with us other than our fenced in yard, but they're still our pets dammit!
In addition to these feathered friends, we have crows wrens, a couple different types of sparrows, chikadees, robins, grackles, and for the first time today saw a brown thrasher. So I have a whole summer of birding just in my backyard to look forward to, and I guess that's the point I wanted to eventually get around to. Often it can feel like there's nothing to shoot, or you can't find anything that satisfies that creative urge in you. As cliche as it may sound, sometimes you just need to look in your backyard. I honeslty never thought birding would be that thing for me, but it has slowly become something I really enjoy. I fully plan to spend many mornings this summer in my back yard with a cup of coffee, and a camera with a long lens trying to capture as many images of these little guys as I can. Anything is better than that feeling of being cooped up all winter.
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