The Magnificent Red-winged Starling

The older I get, the more I appreciate the beauty found in nature. It is a funny thing really, the closer you look, the more things you find that are worthy of contemplation. The small details of the feathers of the bird, the small flower growing in the cracks of the pavement, all of the things that most people neglect to see because of their busy lifestyle.

The Red-winged Starling (Onychognathus morio) is a friend that I have not yet seen. But as soon as I pushed the shutter button on my camera, I knew that this beautiful bird was something special.

Luckily my zoom lens, by now an old grandfather of a lens, functioned properly. The autofocus worked, and I framed this friend perfectly. The extreme detail of the feathers stood out, the sharp beak penetrated my eye through the viewfinder, and its claws clenched around my mind.

At first, I did not know what bird it was. It looked foreign, I have not yet seen such a bird. I am familiar with starlings, the European alien, the indigenous cape starlings and their friends. But I have never seen this particular friend. But thanks to Google image search, I was able to see that it was the red-winged starling!

It looks elegant, like someone wearing a suit, dancing in front of my eyes with grace, magnificence, elegance, and beauty. It knows its own beauty, even though it probably has never seen itself; it will never see itself through the eyes of a human.

But through my human eyes, I can appreciate the texture of its feathers, I can appreciate the penetrating look, the complexity of its own gaze that skirts past me, in search of a snack of some sort.

I call this phenomenon "selfish beauty". The bird friend would never be able to appreciate its own beauty, nor the beauty of his/her fellow friends. But it acts like it knows its own beauty, as if it knows we are looking at it. Even though I was lucky to capture it on photograph, with the zoom lens, it probably knew I was looking at it. Or maybe it was not aware of this fact. Maybe I dodged their eyes, giving me the unique opportunity to look without being seen.

Alas, we shall never know.

I hope that you are doing well, and that you enjoyed this series of photographs of a magnificent friend.

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All of the photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens. The musings and writings are also my own, albeit inspired by the selfish beauty of this bird friend.