Today, two purple finches showed up at my photo feeder. This is exciting because they didn’t show up last year. I seem to get less variety every year. The first year I had my bird blind, I had rose breasted grossbeaks. They haven’t been back since.
I always have cardinals, but the rest of what regularly shows up are what I call “LGBs” or little gray birds; slate colored juncos, chickadees, tufted titmouses, nuthatches and downy woodpeckers. The occasional wren or sparrow doesn’t add much color.
Back in the beginning, I thought the LGBs were a nuisance. The ones that I wanted to photograph were the big, colorful birds. But once I started making composites with more than one bird, especially the big groups in the Judgement Day series and the Bird House series, I gained a new appreciation for the LGBs.
Cardinals, blue jays, towhees, red-bellied woodpeckers and even the grosbeaks don’t have much variety of expression. They have chunky shapeless bodies with thick stubby necks. They’re either munching placidly, or they’re bug-eyed on alert.
Juncos, chickadees, and especially tufted titmouses, on the other hand, are incredibly versatile. They are what make a group composite work; the glue that holds it together and the spice that livens it up. Big birds alone are like those Hollywood action-movie stars that look pretty but can’t act. The LGBs aren’t fancy enough to carry a show on their own, but they can flat out perform.
A titmouse could do Shakespeare.
Here’s some examples:
(above) “What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?” – from Much Ado About Nothing
(above) “I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
-from Macbeth
(above) “And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
-from Richard III
(above) “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
-from Romeo and Juliet
-Julie
