Love of birds: photography of birds near and far – The breeze is still cool. it’s early and the chatter of birds continues before the oppressive heat silences them. Their voices will be replaced by cicadas which is a whole other conversation.

A bully of sorts is the mockingbird. It has no song of its own but mimics every other sound until they control the whole conversation. From a high perch, the sanctimonious mockingbird boasts and shows it prowess at singing other’s song.

The Starlings and English sparrows, they don’t belong here. These outsiders tend to overcompensate, throwing indistinct comments and chatter blending into the background.

The thrush and the robin, they are both songsters, they sing, they share their own beauty, usually from the shadows. Each having a song that should rise to the center of attention, instead they sing quietly, hidden, even modest.

The Woodpecker has OCD-it tends to screech and chip, If it’s not banging it’s head on a wooden perch, it’s searching, obsessing, always building something.

At a certain point, they all go to work, collecting twigs, bits of hair and our paper waste, that never seems to run out. Cowbirds are transients, working in fields, always moving on: they put their eggs in other nests. They are the thieves, the underachievers, taking up space in a nest made for a songbird but the cowbirds don’t sing.

The twitter of birds, all the actors on a stage. Nature doesn’t fall that far from humanity it seems, all we hear is the mockingbird, it’s constant chatter. How we long for the songbird, the diminutive warbler, the brash and beautiful oriole, we could use more beauty and depth instead of the incessant chatter of birds that can’t sing.