I've always thought of myself as a kind of witness. The need to document everything has been around as long as I can remember. A little over a year ago, I took my old Sony digital camera (yes, it's hard to imagine that a digital camera can now be deemed "old") out to Clinton State Park and started shooting. I saw my first bald eagle and I couldn't stop watching. My interest in photography was renewed and integrated with my desire to document and honor the great diversity of animals living in and around Douglas County.
Soon after this project began, I upgraded the Sony Mavica to a Canon Digital Rebel. It wasn't long after this upgrade that I realized the 18-55 mm lens wasn't going to cut it, particularly after I discovered a bald eagle nest. The 18-55 was replaced with the 70-300 mm, which was then replaced with a 100-400 mm, the lens I am using now. The camera seems a bit slow now with the fancier lens, so I am currently saving for a step up in cameras rather than lenses.
When this project began, I had little knowledge of bird species. The bald eagle was an obvious one; they are certainly recognizable. Mostly, my reaction to seeing a new bird was, "Wow, that was a pretty one." I had no idea who was who. I didn't know a warbler from a songbird, a coot from a duck. A year later, I find myself shooting two to three hundred pictures during an outing and coming home to look up unfamiliar birds in Gress and Janzen's Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots.
I cannot look away. I look at each animal as a testament to the great diversity of life on our planet and I want to honor each one. I watch them swimming, flying, hunting, eating, and caring for each other and I wonder what they think of us. They live around humans and some get very close to us. Others are more cautious, but I think they all understand the danger. It is with that in mind that I tiptoe around the lake and river, doing my best not to interrupt the state of things, to witness each animal in their element, doing what they do.
