Good morning. 🕊️🕊️🕊️
20 January 2026
When I got up this morning and let Charlie out the back door, I spotted a huge dark bird perched high in a treetop at the edge of the forest, maybe a hundred meters away. My camera was only a couple of feet from me, so I grabbed it and aimed, but the moment I snapped the shot the lens slipped out of focus. By the time I tried for a second image, the bird had vanished. An expletive escaped my mouth—directed squarely at the bird—for slipping my lens so cleanly.
It was probably just a vulture, though I’ve never seen one in that particular tree. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a large hawk; the small birds in my backyard were still busy at the feeders, and if a hawk were around the place would have gone silent. It was too big for a crow, maybe big enough for a raven, but we don’t have ravens here. For all I know, it could have been a winged monkey, because the single image I managed is nothing but an out‑of‑focus dark blotch. C’est la vie. 🤷♂️
This afternoon an electrician is coming to move the electrical outlet behind the stove. Between the thickness of the plug, the outlet’s protrusion, and the placement of the stove’s rear vent, I can’t push the stove close enough to the wall to fully open the drawer beside it—the oven handle blocks it. If I calculated the cost of the job based on gaining just half an inch of clearance, it comes out to more than a thousand dollars per inch. Holy moly 😱. But I want it done, and I’m not about to experiment with 250 volts in the name of DIY enlightenment.
“Hope is the thing with feathers.” - Emily Dickinson
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work." - Wendell Berry
“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” - James Baldwin
#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #wildlife #nature #bird #birds #birding #birdwatching #birdphotography #fmorning #pigeons #electronics
