Dawns Early Light

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Why eagles fly. If you’ve ever asked yourself that question I’m sure you’ve come up with the most obvious answer. Because they can. But I think there’s a deeper answer and that is because they want to.

I’m not talking about the fact that they’ve come down the pike genetically designed to fly, or they need to fly to hunt and eat, or to find mates, all the stuff biologists and those other folks who collect facts and figures about them talk about when they describe birds, of course those are reasons.

I’m talking about the feelings that one gets when seeing a bird gliding effortlessly across the sky, hawks riding the thermals or matching the pitch and shape of their wings so that they hover there against the bright blue sky, motionless for as long as they want to be, before swooping down in a breathtaking dive to collect their next meal. Or seeing two Golden eagles performing the most amazing aerobatics during their mating flights, rushing past each other with all the speed they can gather then turning at the very last moment and grasping each others talons to tumble-down towards the earth in a dizzying spiral, letting go just before they strike the earth to swoop away and climb to the very heights of their abilities, to repeat it again and again.

Or just the gentle flight from last nights perch to a new one, one better placed to catch the dawns early light. Watching the subtle shades of the morning light turn from the warm colors of the early sun towards the harsher colors of full day as they make the flight, exercising those wings stiff from last nights cold.  If we see this and experience that feeling of intense but quiet joy at their limitless freedom imagine what the bird feels.

When I was younger I read a book called “The Once And Future King” by T. H. White. You may have read it yourself, I know you’ve probably seen the Disney movie “The Sword In The Stone” which is the first part of The Once and Future King and it is where Wart, who is to become King Arthur in the not too distant future is changed into various animals and birds as lessons in life by Merlin, his wizard tutor.

The part where he is turned into several different hawks and other birds has always stuck in my mind. I want to do that. I mean it, change me into a Peregrine falcon right now. T.H. White’s descriptions of the various changes that Wart goes through are written in such a way that you almost feel you could understand how that would work. What it  would feel like. It is one of the reasons that I try and capture the feeling in my images in the hope that I can bring to life what I’m seeing and feeling when I get to see sights like the one above. This is a shot of a Bald Eagle heading for a sunnier perch than he spent the night on, at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge. The colors are courtesy of the early morning sun.