Photo Challenge #06 - Birds and Ducks, Part Two

The bird photos have been posted. Here are the duck photos...

There's something about these first two photos that makes me want to quote a song. Oh you know what, I will - It's a great song that always makes me smile!

It's just a jump to the left

And then a step to the right

With your hands on your hips

 You bring your knees in tight

Okay, after the second line the lyrics no longer match the photos, so I'll stop quoting Time Warp lyrics from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Although, now that I'm quoting lyrics I might as well keep going...

It's just a jump to the left

And then a step to the right

With your hands on your hips

You bring your knees in tight

So, lyrics. Unless Dakota Moon want to sing "I want to be a duck" instead of "I want to be an eagle," quoting Another Day Goes By doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Although, neither did quoting Time Warp with regards to ducks. So, what if we just pretend that the duck in the photos below is actually dreaming of being an eagle? That could work...

I want to be an eagle soaring high
Sign my name across the sky

Although, come to think of it, R. Kelly's "I believe I can fly" might be even more appropriate. It's my blog and I'll quote if I want to, so I'll just use both...

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away

I want to be an eagle soaring high, sign my name across the sky

I believe I can fly... I believe I can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day... Spread my wings and fly away

Since I'm qouting lyrics, it's only right that the other photos get treated to the same honour.  Which makes a duck walking across the grass a bit of a challenge - it's not like the duck in question is spreading any wings or even doing anything all that interesting. Craig David's Walking Away is the first song that came to mind. Aerosmith's Walk This Way might be appropriate as well. And how about the Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian? Surely Egyptian ducks waddle just like Dutch ducks do, though? I'll compromise and use a quote from a book instead of lyrics from a song. Douglas Adams' 1987 detective novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency provides me with a quote that fits the general theme of this post quite well:

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we
have at least to consider the possibility that we have
a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Having quoted song lyrics and a few lines from a book, we are now left with only three photos. As I've about exhausted my supply of fitting quotes, here's a last one, this one water-related. The photo below brings to mind a line from The Beatles' Yellow Submarine about a 'sea of green'.

So we sailed up to the sun
Till we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

Till we found the sea of green

They look like friends, these two ducks. As I sat and watched the water, I saw them go past several times. Together, side by side. Like they refused to leave each other or had made a pact to explore the river together. As I watched them go past, I imagined they might be siblings or even best friends. Which got me wondering - Do ducks dream of lifelong friendships?

This last photo isn't as clear / sharp as I hoped it would be. Yet it reminds me of a lovely afternoon spent enjoying the sunshine and comes with a story that stayed with me. The photo was taken from behind (perhaps I should say 'taken through') a sea of green swaying in the wind. The swan had been sitting on shore, looking asleep. There was a small temporary construction site behind the swan and a block of flats behind that, a fence leading almost all the way to the water. The swan sat right by the fence, blocking the only entry to the site, the only way past. A man came by, wanting to get past the fence. He spent a while yelling at the swan, waving a bag he held at the swan. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was doing - I couldn't understand why a grown man was harassing a poor swan, acting like a child. As I watched from across the small lake, I wanted to head over to him to tell him off for disturbing the swan. After those few seconds his actions began to make sense to me - I imagine that he wanted to reach the block of flats just behind the construction site, wanted to cut across the site to go home.

As the swan gracefully entered the water and the man stalked past, I shook my head, angry on the swan's behalf. The man could have walked around to the other side of the block of flats, could have left the swan in peace. Yet he wasted a good minute trying to get it to move, yelling and waving his bag at the poor bird who probably had no clue why the man was acting that way. That minute the man spent yelling at the swan, he could have walked around the flats in less time than that. It all seemed so pointless. The swan didn't seem to mind the intrusion and I got to enjoy the sight of this beautiful swan gliding past. Yet a small part of me was hoping the swan would turn around and show the man that it was angry, that the disturbance was an intrusion. It got me thinking about how we treat living beings in our world, about how humans often care only about ourselves, about what is convenient to us. The man could have just left the swan in peace, could have perhaps enjoyed the beauty and grace of the bird as it sat on shore as he walked past. Yet he didn't, he chased the swan off instead, seeming to care only about getting it to move, getting to his destination. How often do we treat nature and the beautiful beings who live on this planet as nothing but a burden, something to be removed or cleared away so we can get past or get our own way? 

Swan, Lake