Yours, Suspiciously

I have a lingering suspicion that some species of birds have long conspired to make photographers look as silly as a goose (why do I get a feeling that geese must be on the board of directors of that conglomerate!?). OK, truce. As silly as a sheep, then (I will tackle this when I get to photographing sheep).

Firstly, they make it a point to sit on a branch right overhead, their ventral expose quite in your face (literally!). The said spot is meticulously chosen such that it will be the most shadowed part of the tree. Translated, the accompanied mocking chitter chatter would assuredly state, “Now let me see you adjust the aperture!” Then they set into motion (literally, again!) their next diabolical move – flitting about (but taking care not to exceed an angle more than 10 degrees to the vertical, i.e., you below) in a crazed dance of glee, mouthing, “There goes your shutter speed!” And it is then that they deal the killer blow with finer adjustments through wriggling their supple bodies so that patches of the bright white overcast sky peeping carelessly through the over-accommodating leaves catches the silhouette of their dark wings. They might as well have stabbed you with their bristled, pointed beaks; their overjoyed guttural articulation implying, “So now, I have killed your ISO and EV, Ok?”

Such is the life of the perspiring, perplexed, passionate, proletarian photographer cursing the M on the dial and desperately flicking through P, S and A for perpetual succour. So much for the love of birds…

[In the frame (serendipitously): The White-spotted Fantail or Spot-breasted Fantail (Rhipidura albogularis)]

– Narendra Nayak © 2020