![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/psnp.info\/p4td_\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/DSC06524-2-1.jpg?resize=904%2C603\")
Tufted Titmouse, our back deck, Kennebunk Maine<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cIf your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!\u201d Jesus<\/p>\n
Yesterday, when I was in the kitchen beginning to think about supper, I slid back the screen on the back deck sliding-door to chase a squirrel away, and then, when the birds at the feeding station came back almost immediately (including our female Ruby-throated Hummingbird) I left the door open and went for my camera. The light was lovely, with filtered sun after a brief rainstorm on the feeding station and the apple branches we have bolted to the deck for perches around it, and the background of dark trees 25 feet behind the station already in shadow. There was a fairly constant flow of Chickadees and Titmice, and the hummingbird came in for a drink from the feeder several times and perched out on the apple branches. I had a very enjoyable 30 minutes standing and watching and taking pictures. Small active birds are always a challenge, photographically, and there was the added test of getting exposure on the sunlit birds right against the dark background. And of course, there were the birds themselves, going about their business only a dozen feet from me. Thoroughly enjoyable, and perhaps more so, since I was propped up in back door of my own home. When I bolted the apple branches to the deck, it was times like this that I was thinking of\u2026hoping for.<\/p>\n
This Tufted Titmouse came several times. The image has almost a \u201cstudio\u201d feel to it, a portrait, as though I posed and lit the bird for best effect. The lighting and the background gives the bird unusual dimension\u2026and that, along with the level of detail in the feathers and in the bark of the branch, makes it look uncommonly \u201creal\u201d\u2026alive and present. And of course, it was images like this that I was thinking of when I bolted the apple branches to the deck. 🙂<\/p>\n
Still, for all my forethought (or hope) and what little skill I can claim with the camera, it is the bird that makes the image. The bird, bold enough to perch on my apple branch, close, while I stood completely visible in the open door. The bird with its little spark of life, trusting that little spark of life to me in exchange for a sunflower seed or two.<\/p>\n
I think it is bred into us, even stronger than our hunting instinct, this desire for the peaceable kingdom\u2026for an Eden-like experience where we are surrounded by all that lives\u2026by every living creature, neither threatened by, or a threat to it\u2026at peace with life itself. I think it is part of our heritage as children of God\u2026the overflow and outflow of the creative love, the caring heart, that made the whole of the natural world we are part of. Our kinship with all that lives is an expression of our kinship with God, who created all in love.<\/p>\n
And yes, it was to celebrate that kinship that I built the feeding station on our deck\u2026and the foresight expressed was one instance (still too rare) of my eye being generous, and the light within me reaching forward in time to encounters and images like this. Happy Sunday!<\/p>\n