This is a story about a missed opportunity.
I was out refilling our bird feeders the evening of October 20th when I saw a tiny bird flitting about in a box elder tree. Its frenetic movement as it tumbled from one twig to the next told me it was a kinglet. Then I saw the bright yellow streak on its crown. This was a golden-crowned kinglet. The first I’d seen all year.
“Take your camera out there, no matter what,” Jimmy is always reminding me. Of course, I didn’t have it with me. I put down the bag of seeds and watched the kinglet. Would it stay a bit or fly off? I turned quietly and hustled into the house, grabbed my camera and went back out.
It was still there, foraging for insects among the dried seed pods on the tree. I started taking photos. Good photos. This golden-crowned kinglet paid me no mind at all. It came out to the ends of the branches, flashing its yellow crown before flittering over to its next momentary perch.
I couldn’t believe this bird was being so cooperative and that I was getting such good captures.
Then something made me stop and check to see if I had the memory card in the camera. Keeping my eyes on the bird, I flipped over the camera, opened the hatch and ran my fingers over where the SD card should be.
Empty.
I spat out a stream of cuss words in an angry, poorly contained whisper as I ran back into the house. Find the memory card in the laptop, log in to Windows, wait, eject the damn card, put it into the camera, mumble something unintelligible to Jimmy about being pissed off with myself.
It’ll be a miracle if this bird is still there, I said to myself as I got back to the tree.
The miracle didn’t happen.
Even the most cooperative bird doesn’t give you three chances when it’s foraging during fall migration.
I stood there, having flashbacks of the opportunities I’d missed from making this same stupid mistake. The fledging bluebirds in Virginia. The bluebirds in their winter habitat in the Pennsylvania woods. The spring-migrating warblers I’d never be able to identify because I left the memory card in the laptop.
I spent much of the next afternoon looking for my lost kinglet with the golden crown, staking out the fall goldenrod and the trees where I’d been seeing ruby-crowned kinglets for three weeks, almost daily. Nothing.
About ready to call it a day, I saw motion in a thicket next to one of our feeder stations. A tiny, hyperactive bird. Could it be another golden-crowned kinglet? I approached and knew instantly: it wasn’t. It was another ruby-crowned kinglet.
Crap. I already have plenty of ruby crown shots. I don’t need anymore.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, your humility and better judgment will prevail when you’re being full of yourself. This was one of those times.
Follow this bird. Learn something, said the voice inside me.
Here was another kinglet that wasn’t shy and couldn’t have cared less about me as I inched closer, pressing the shutter over and over again.
For the first time ever, I was able to watch a ruby-crowned kinglet poke under loose fragments of bark in search of insects. I never knew they did that.
I even got my first photo of a kinglet with its bill open while searching for food.
I began to figure out how to anticipate the bird’s next movement. Rather than being a second behind it, I was able to partially predict where it would go next. This allowed me to get more detail of its tiny feathers and see the subtlety of color on its breast.
I was also able to get my clearest photo of a ruby-crowned kinglet to date—a magic moment when the bird, the light, the twigs, my small lens—and my memory card—aligned.
Two more kinglets showed up afterward. One visited an apple tree, coming out from the leaves for a good view.
And this one that I found just before dark in another apple tree. A male with the seldom-seen ruby streak on his crown fully visible.
It’s not a great photo, but it was a great moment for me. I’ve only ever seen this once before, two years ago when I saw this species for the first time.
I didn’t get the opportunity I wanted that day. I got a better one.
I learned that checking off items on a list of species is cool, but there’s something truly awe-inspiring about being with a songbird in its environment long enough to begin to know it.
I will never know everything there is to understand about all the birds I encounter. So when I am permitted to spend time in their world, I need to take them up on it. I will never, ever be disappointed.
Stephen Stills said it best:
If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with. I did that on an afternoon in late October, and it taught me a thing or two about a bird, about myself and about life.
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