The Hunt for Turtles

So, here is this challenge to capture the wild, and what do I have? Ducks… lots and lots of ducks. Don’t get me wrong, I like taking pictures of ducks. There is nothing wrong with some great duck prints, but I wanted something more. I live in a city, it is not a huge city, but its still city enough that you have to look for wildlife. There are some beautiful bike paths that follow a creek and within that little micro bubble of nature there are critters a plenty to take pictures of. I wanted something interesting, something cool… and that is when I saw the turtles.

Three turtles on a log across the stream from me, in my head I wondered where Raphael was (I mean… Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo are the cooler turtles, am I right?) So, I point my camera and get a picture of two as the other is obscured and then they leap into the water. I was all the way across the creek, why so shy little turtles? I looped around the bike path to get on the other side of them. There they were on their log again.

I tried to get pictures, but once again swoosh, into the water they went, I am not a very stealthy person. Grrrrr. I waited patiently, thinking that they might get back onto their log if I was quiet enough. All of a sudden, one of the turtle’s heads popped up out of the water, rotated, and I swear to bob, he looked directly at me and then sploosh his head disappeared.

I was left with an empty log and with a sigh worthy of teenage drama queen, I trudged away. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get pictures of them after that. I wandered off taking pictures as I went but grumbling to myself about the turtles. I stopped my grumbling when I saw the bottle brush looking tree with bees buzzing around it. The bright red, and the flitting bees simply made me happy.

After that, I spent several days trying very hard to get pictures of these non-teenage mutant turtles. All the while, I had been taking pictures of the other critters I had seen on my walks. I was having troubles with the turtles... as I mentioned before I am not very sneaky and they always heard me and scampered into the creek. After the fourth fruitless day, I realized something. It came to me as I was taking pictures of a very handsome squirrel who seemed to be posing just for me.

I am glad there was no one around, because I was in full lunatic photographer mode- walking around the tree saying things like "work it," and "Oh yea you're gorgeous," and "you go boy." (I had arbitrarily decided that the little fellow was a boy.)

It made me realize that I was no longer worried about the turtles. In my walks I had found a lot of beautiful things. Like this pretty little hummingbird whom I noticed as I was walking down one of the bike paths.

I saw this bird sitting on top of a tree, it seemed that the bird was just chilling up there waiting for me to take a picture.

And then of course, there are the ducks. There are ducks everywhere on the paths near the creek and I have this fetish of taking pictures of ducks. As I said at the start, I was looking for other things but of course I couldn't just ignore them.

I love the one above, the colors are just fantastic. Ducks don't seem so boring anymore. Oooo... shiny ducks! Did you know that the ducks have been domesticated for hundreds of years? Romans domesticated ducks for cripes sake. (There's a ducks are cooler than they seem fact for you- haha.)

I lucked out, and caught some ducks leaping out of the water about to fly away (from me I think, since my stealth capability is non existence). I readied my camera.

As those ducks flew away, and I frantically tried to get some shots of them, I realized how majestic it was. I wasn't worrying about the turtles, or that ducks were boring or that the pictures were not exciting. I simply saw the beauty. On my way home, I saw the squirrel again, and I couldn't help but take another few shots.

I owe a thanks to that squirrel who woke me and made me realize something extremely important. Beauty can be found all around us, but if we aren't paying attention- we will never see it.