A Common Goldeneye and a Common Eider in the same frame is a not-so-common shot. Especially when they are both single birds swimming at the mouth of a creek where it meets a river, a few hundred yards from the sea. Especially these days. Eiders used to be very common off our coast in winter.  Rafts of them, many hundreds of individual birds, used to winter close to shore, many rafts between Portsmouth New Hampshire and Portland Maine. Today you are lucky to find individual birds. Something changed in the sea bed, overnight during one October storm, that scattered the rafts and sent the Eiders to winter elsewhere. Common Goldeneye, on the other hand, was never abundant…I think I am still seeing about the same number of a winter, individual pairs in sheltered coves and river mouths. There was a female with this gentleman. The two have been at the mouth of Back Creek every day for more than a month now.

In this shot, the low, direct sun of a March afternoon across the water makes the birds pop…and brings out bright eye of the Goldeneye, and the subtle green on the head of the Eider.

Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm optical equivalent with digital 2x extender for 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/800th @ f13. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

And for the Sunday Thought: that is the real challenge, isn’t it: to see the extraordinary in the common. Though common is in the names of these birds, they are anything but common. Sometimes the angle of the light helps, as in this image, and sometimes the juxtaposition of elements assists, again as in this image…but the fact is that ordinary, common, lives behind our eyes and not in front of them. It is the way we look at the world…not the world itself. Every second of these lives we live is extraorindary…so unlikely that it should amaze us…fill us with wonder…and keep us forever right on the edge of disbelief. Every creature in creation is so astoundingly special, and every encounter so potentially awesome, that we should wonder…wonder if it could all be real…and constantly celebrate the fact that it is. It is my daily prayer…to have, this day, new eyes. To see nothing as ordinary, nothing as common. I am probably as bad at it as anyone can be, and still be alive…but I have my moments…when a trick of the afternoon light, or conjunction of two unlikely birds, wakes me to the extraordinary in the ordinary. When I can not avoid seeing.

I don’t always, but sometimes I have a camera in my hand, at my eye, when that happens. Them I get to share it. Even better!