Though I am at The Biggest Week in American Birding along the Erie shore in Ohio this morning, I still have a lot images from Godwit Days in Northern California, and the Florida Birding and Photo Fest in St. Augustine to share. This is another from my one visit to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery. Such a great place for bird photography!

In May there are many nests of several species and young in almost any stage of development from egg to fledgling. There is nothing quite so ungainly–elegant–beautiful–ugly as the chick of the Great Egret. And I do not mean that they are sometimes ungainly and sometimes elegant, etc. I mean that they are all those things simultaneously in a mix that most people just call “cute”. Yet, cute, in my opinion does not apply. I am driven to resort to compound and conflicted adjectives to capture even a hint of the nature of the creature. The image does it better.

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.  About 300mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/300th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

And for the Sunday thought: part of the appeal of Great Egret chicks, or any nestlings, certainly has to be that they touch our paternalistic instincts. They look so alive and so helpless that we are moved. We want them to grow and become…and in some vague sense we are willing to give ourselves to make that happen if necessary. Not that we think this through. It is called “the paternal instinct”. Some would say it is hard wired into our brains, as unavoidable as the knee jerk that doctor elicits with his little hammer.

I suspect there is a spiritual dimension to it as well though. I suspect it is more than brain chemistry and electrical patterns running a prerecorded routine. You could push the experience to say that on some level we are aware of our unity with all that lives. On some level we are aware of our responsibility for all that lives. Cute kittens, puppies, and, yes, Egret chicks break through our isolation as a species and as ourselves to call to a more basic calling. We are called to care. We are, I have to believe, made to care.

In the bustle and the busyness of business and relationships we sometimes forget. We sometimes think we are made to succeed. Or we are made to compete. Or we are made to acquire. Egret chicks on the nest at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery are a gentle reminder that, indeed, we are made to care.