Caution: dead baby bird, but not gruesome at all

(I've put three photos at the very end of this post, so if you don't want to see them, they won't be in your face right away. But there's nothing gruesome or disgusting about them -- no bugs, no injuries, nothing icky.)

This morning I was outside playing with an old Lensbaby lens (Lensbaby 2.0). I haven't used it in years, so I put it on the camera and went out for a walk around the yard to see what I could find.

I photographed flowers, hostas, the driveway -- fairly banal stuff. But then remembered some flowers I'd found the other day, so was heading directly over to find them. I looked down and saw a baby bird that had apparently fallen out of a nest. Looking up into the trees, I saw no nest.

Was the bird still alive? He looked so fresh and new. I reached down. He was cold, but not stiff. I turned him over. There was a puncture wound of sorts and some liquid was coming out. No sign of life. I picked him up.

So tiny. So cute with a little tuft of fuzziness at the top of his head. My only camera was the DSLR with the Lensbaby on it, and a macro filter on top of that. So I held the bird in my left hand while shooting with the right.

A Lensbaby, especially the older version, is tough enough to manipulate with two hands; one-handed is a real challenge.

I took a few shots and then, bird in hand, went into the house to get my iPhone. Back outside to take a few more images. I set him back down in the leaves and the flowers, sorry to see what had happened to him, yet marveling at this little guy, looking very much like a plucked chicken, just a few days (I'm guessing) out of the egg.

We have lots of robins right now on the property, zooming all over the place. I'm thinking this was a robin and that some other bird, perhaps a Cooper's hawk, maybe an owl, got hold of this guy but had a tenuous grip and dropped him. Very, very recently.

I understand if many of you think these are disgusting photos. To me, they are astonishing, sad, yet miraculous. I feel privileged to have held him for a few minutes, so soon after he had moved on.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Warning: photo of bird who "has ceased to be"

In our yard we have what we call "The Orchard," a small plot of ground that has a few apple trees in it and a couple of rose bushes. It's fenced all 'round to keep out the black-tailed Columbia deer that hang out on the property.

It's hard to mow in there and as a result, it had gotten rather weedy. I entered to do some gardening and noticed a dead towhee on the ground at my feet.

You might think "ick" and want to turn away, but I found him fascinating. The bird had been "no more" for some time, and all that remained was a skeleton, feathery wings, and tail.

Insects had done their work and moved on, leaving this guy quite bald, empty-eyed, and all his ribs intact. Since the "orchard" is fenced, no animals could get in there to do damage to the bird's body.

There was no sign of foul play, no pile of torn off feathers that you might expect to see if a hawk had gotten him. I think he simply died of old age, fell to earth in the orchard, and, before he could begin pushing up daisies, I found him and brought him into the studio.

This is him, "lying in state." After I took this shot, I ran a little monofilament line through a couple of his ribs and hung him up over the light table, where I'm hoping to photograph him seemingly "flying."

Creepy? Yeah, I can see how you might think so. But he's rather mummified, has no smell, isn't leaking any bodily fluids, nor are insects interested in him.

When I've finished my photography, then what? Well, I'll bury him under a tree. Or a rhododendron bush. Or maybe under some Shasta daisies.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.