30 Minutes in the Life :July 2014

It is hard to believe that we have been doing the 30 Minutes in the Life blog for a whole year. Congratulations to all my fellow photographers for being so committed to this project and for sticking with it.  I have loved every minute of doing this. I have been stretch and have hopefully grown over this past year.  

In the life of a photographer, whose art is created in tiny fractions of a second, thirty minutes is a sustained thought.  Thirty, minutes, the length of a child's ballet class, a quick sauce's simmer; a commute, is long enough to witness change and short enough to be over before you know it.  We offer you here our monthly results of thirty minutes of watching and waiting and recording, of rendering permanent those fractions of a second that slip past in the time it takes to watch a television show.  

                                      

                                      Thirty minutes in the life ~ Sara Kelly

My very first photo shoot with this group was taken at Green Cay Wetlands, and while it was not planned, it was very fitting that this one be taken there as well.  This time around my 30 Minutes was taken in one spot. If I moved it was to get a better angle for my photo.  But I did not move to much.  I hope that you get as much pleasure out of this as I got taking these photo's. When you find something like this there is this level of excitement that you find really hard to contain.

This  first photo was not part of my 30 minutes however, it sets the scene for those that follow. 

It was Thursday evening and I decided to stop in at the wetlands on my way home from work. I had heard that chicks had left the nest but were hanging out close by. 

The weather in South Florida has been pretty wet, but I came prepared.  A rain sleeve for my camera.  Me, not so prepared - I got wet.  I walked up and down the area I understood the chicks to be in, waited out the rain under the shelter, walked back to look for the chicks.  No luck.  So I had a choice, walk the loop of the wetlands or go home.  Walk the loop won.  By pure accident I saw this nest.  And inside the fluff of a tiny chick.  

On my way out I met a couple who said that they had been there the night before and these chicks were not in the nest. For me that meant they were brand new.  Knowing what I know now, these chicks were not brand new - they were at least a week old, but still that is new enough.

I like new life.  I like babies (so long as they go home with their parents). I like new animal life. I like the curl of a brand new fern.  New life represents new opportunities. I want to enjoy them before mine run out.  

Sunday afternoon, I decided to skip the soccer (which was not hard to do) and head back out to the wetlands.  I had one place in mind.  The chicks nest. 

It was here that I stationed myself for the next 30 minutes watching the comings and goings of the male and female Red-wing Blackbirds.  They took turns feeding the baby chicks.

For a while both parents were away from the nest.  These too looked so vulnerable alone. The open mouth seemed to be the constant position these little ones held.  "Where's the food?"  

As in most cases, and I don't think it is any different with these little guys, survival of the fittest seems to play a large role. Red-wing Blackbirds primarily live on seeds and insects.  The parent flies off and will come back with an insect which she then puts down the baby chicks throat. Typically they will eat things like dragonflies, butterflies, moths or seeds and grain from plants.

Instinctively the little chicks know when a parent is nearby.  The father had yet to reach them, yet their heads were up and they were looking out for him.  

Dad came in and once again the same bird was fed.  I started to feel like "mmm that is not fair".  

I think this had to be the favorite position of the day.  I love their beaks and the alien type look their faces have.  

It was quite interesting - 3 of us were standing on the broadwalk watching the feeding of these little chicks.  At one stage dad flew up and dive bombed the guy adjacent to the person next to me.  I saw this behavior a couple of weeks back near the place where I originally went to look for chicks.  A Red-wing Blackbird male was very agitated when a Wood Stork flew in.  

"Dad you are squishing us"  After feeding the chicks the male settled down on top of the chicks.  Whether this was for protection or whether the humans threatened them, I do not know but he stayed there until the female came back.

The female Red-wing Blackbird hovered on a branch for a short while before flying in to feed the chicks again.

No sooner had the male flown off when the heads went back up again looking for food.  

Once again the furthest bird got fed again.  I was really starting to feel sorry for the little one.  I hope that it begins to assert itself and clamor for food just like its sibling is doing.  

Can you beat that face - a face only a mother can love.  Well me too.  I am totally blown away by the beauty of these tiny little chicks.  They do say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".  

Finally it feels like my rooting for the little one has paid off.  The female gives it food.   I felt like shouting hooray.  

I cannot imagine how draining it must be to come home to these demanding little ones.  Their only objective right now is food.  

The female dug around in the nest and then eventually positioned herself over the chicks.  For a while it drizzled with rain, and she stayed there, as did I.  I covered my camera with my rain sleeved and just decided to get a little wet if need be. An interesting fact that I did not see but someone else caught on camera, is that the baby chick poops out a fecal sac and the mother removes it from the nest.  Hopefully I will get that next time I visit.  

The male flew back a short while later and you can see a tiny red insect in his mouth.  

He was not as cooperative this time as he had been in the past.  He covered the babies and it was much harder to get a good view of them. 

From the looks of things this little one was getting squished by the dad.  Of course that had to be the one I was rooting for. 

Once again the male Red-wing Blackbird settled down on top of the chicks and waited for the female to come back.  At this point I had over 50 photographs of the babies and I decided to head out with a plan to come back another day and see how much they have grown.  

I thought I would go back and just grab one more shot of these tiny chicks to show you how much they had grown in the past 5 days.  My heart just dropped when I got there.  

All that was there was an empty nest.  There were no chicks nearby, no parents flying to and fro.  It is just the unknown.  Maybe they were able to fly, though I doubt it.  Potentially, they were preyed upon.  Perhaps they fell out the nest.  I do not know.  I hate unknowns.  

Walking out there today I stopped to look at something and else, and as I looked down, this is what I spotted.

A new nest, insided it nestled two tiny blue eggs.  These are the eggs of a Red-wing Blackbird. Mom was nearby.  This time I am going to monitor them more frequently, perhaps stopping by after work to make sure that all is okay. I have to say these are probably my favorite of all the chicks.

This is ...the circle of life........

" The bird dares to break the shell,

then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly.

This is sthe simplest principle of success.

You dream, you dare, and you fly"

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Don't forget to follow the link and take a look at what Polina Bulman, Brooklyn Lifestyle Photographer has posted for her blog this month.

If you are interested in seeing more of my photography take a look at my Facebook page or my Flickr Page.