A Trophy

This image has been added to all of the PRINTS galleries.

I am not your typical Delmarva hunter. Unlike deer hunters here on the Eastern Shore who put corn feeders out to bring the deer in closer to their stands, or goose hunters with their decoys, I get to bait my prey 365 days a year. My weapon of choice is a camera instead of a gun, and my prey are songbirds. And yet the most avid of hunters and I share the same goal. We both want to go out and get that “BIG ONE”. The one that is worthy of rising above all others to become trophy status. Be it either a mounted male deer head displaying his beautiful rack of antlers or a picture on a calendar hanging on the wall, the goal is the same.

I guess you know by now that bird watching is another of my passions. One of my grandfathers shared his passion for bird watching with me and I have been hooked since my days way back in elementary school. So it only seemed to be a natural thing for me to combine this passion with the one I have with photography. And with the layout of our backyard, I have a seemingly unlimited source of prey to hunt, unless they are actually being hunted by a hawk or the neighbor’s wandering cats. The songbirds sit in a Magnolia tree, while coming and going to their feeders, and are used to me being around as long as I keep my distance.

This month’s featured image is just a simple portrait of a male Cardinal. It might not be the strongest image in this year’s collection, with the background being a little chaotic. But it does a really good job of making his red coloring stand out. What makes this image special for me is the Cardinal’s pose when I captured him. With his head slightly cocked to the side, you get a good look at his face. There is an old saying that eyes are the window to the soul, and I feel it important to see a bird’s eye if I want to display its image. This is hard to do with male Cardinals due to their coloring. So the pose he gave me was perfect in meeting this criteria.

For the whole month of March, his image is now hanging on a den wall, just like a trophy. Whenever I look over his way he makes me smile. Yet, in the back of my mind I feel that there is something else out there that is still even bigger and better for me to hunt down with my camera. And that is all the inspiration I need to get up and out on the hunt again.