Last April we took a trip to visit our son and daughter-in-law in Georgia. When we got home I started posting pictures on my blog of the places we visited, but never finished. Since I have a little time now I decided to post some more of our photos. (For anyone interested, the first batch of pictures started here.) The following pictures of boat-tailed grackles were captured at the Howard Gilman Memorial Park on the waterfront of St. Marys, Georgia. The park has a lovely large water fountain and on the day we visited it was doubling as a bird bath!
To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,
When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.
~ Richard Wilbur
(New & Collected Poems)
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)
Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.
~ Gregory Maguire
(Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years)
photos by Tim Rodgers
These are amazing photographs! Such light and playfulness! wonderful!
Thanks, Jeff – I will let Tim know – he had bought the new lens that morning and was having a lot of fun with it!
I can’t even begin to single out a favorite as they’re — each one — wonderful! You even managed to captured clarity of the water drops, and the intense facial expression of the bird. Well done!
Thank you, Laurie! I’m sure Tim will be pleased that you enjoyed his shots so much. 🙂 There were so many good ones it was difficult for me to choose which ones to post and so I wound up posting more of them than I meant to…
On a snowy, bitter Nova Scotia day, it’s a tonic to see these wonderful images. The money spent on the new lens was well worth the investment.
Thank you, Sybil! We’ve been dazzled over and over again by the results we get with this lens, even if it is a bit cumbersome lugging it around. Hope your weather has warmed up a little…
Great photos of the grackles. Congratulations to Tim.
Love the Barbara Kingsolver quote.
Thank you, Rosie – I’ll let Tim know. 🙂 And some people find out that what they thought they wanted wasn’t really what they wanted after all…
What wonderful photos Barbara! I thought at first that the bird looked like a crow, but it’s really blue/black, isn’t it? Tim did a fabulous job of capturing the grackle at play in the fountain. 🙂
Thank you, Joanne – I’ll let Tim know! I think it’s hard to tell crows and grackles apart – that shimmering blue only seems to be visible in certain kinds of reflecting light. We were mesmerized by the blue coming and going as the birds were moving…
That is a very handsome bird. Are grackles of the crow family? (We don’t have them here.)
Crows belong to the jay family and grackles belong to the blackbird family. They can be difficult to distinguish, but the crow is completely black and the grackle appears black but has that purple or blue shimmer. Also, crows have black eyes and grackles have yellow eyes!
Wonderful photos and quotes! Thanks so much for sharing. XO
Thank you, Diane, and you’re welcome, too! 🙂