He lands perfectly, swift motions make it look like mechanical perfection. In fact, machines cannot land this smoothly.
I stood there pushing the shutter button, wholly perchance, at the right place at the right time. Luckily the old camera stayed in focus. He landed and I have proof of the smooth landing!
Commonly refered to in my homelanguage as the Bosluisvoël, directly translated as "tick bird", you usually see it close to cattle or elephants in the wild, hence their other name, cattle egrets.
Strangely, this one was alone and far away from cattle (from my perspective). There could have been close by, but I could not spot any. Maybe it just wanted to say hi? Maybe it was life waving and smiling at me!
It is always magical to look at birds when they land. Again, they make it seem so easy; as if it is something everyone should be able to do. But I am not one to try and copy them. It would not in any shape or form work.
An interesting thing I read about them recently is that some people in the northern parts of Africa used to be on the lookout for many of these birds. That is, if there are many of them in close proximity, they would know a drought is on the way and subsequently move the cattle. How dumb are we modern people from the concrete jungle when it comes to this type of knowledge? How doomed is our species when the internet suddenly stops and all of the old wisdom is dead because we did not ever write it down?
It was not long before my friend decided to fly away. As swift as the arrival was, so the departure went as well.
Goodbye my friend, I waved to him as the shutter on my camera sounded like rapid fire.
It tucked its feet in and flew away, like a jet plane. It had better things to do than to watch me. Or pose for me. Many bugs lay waiting to be eaten by him! And as the saying goes, the early bird catches the worm, or the early egret catches the maggot (as this is apparently also a favorite snack of theirs). In any case, I hope you enjoyed this post! What a stunning bird he is not?
The photographs are my own, taken with my old Nikon D300 that still refuses to die (a win for me!). The musings are also my own unless stated otherwise or hyperlinked.
Stay well, and happy birding!
