Lean

Seven years on this week:

I find it sad that it's impossible to 'go viral' with a bird photo. 😔 For example, I've been posting my birds here for 9 years, thousands of my own images, and though I've built a large following, I've never had that one image that does 'out of the ordinary'. My most popular post was a brief phone video of a meadow of flowers! Not a bird in sight... 😒😅 I'm not just talking about my pictures, I can only think of one bird photo that went viral on the internet, and that was the incredible photo of a weasel on the back of a flying Green Woodpecker, many years ago! 😮 I find it sad, because obviously, the general public aren't quite interested in birds enough. 😢 Nice landscape photos, often ones taken off the net, go viral all the time, buildings, sunsets, cute animals the same.... where is the love for birds? 💔 For me, birds are the greatest family of living creatures on the planet, I've been marvelling at them in wonderment ever since my grandad lifted me up onto his shoulders on his Kent fruit farm to point out a nesting Goldfinch in one of his apple trees. Almost half a century later, I'm still in awe of the feathered miracles that share our lives. 😍🐦 Please, next time you see a bird, just pause, and look at it....really LOOK at it, don't just see it. Listen to it, observe it's behaviour, see how it interacts with other birds and the environment it is in. Birds are declining at an astonishing rate. They're a great indicator of the state of the planet. Unless we all really start to LOVE birds, putting their needs at the forefront of our thinking, more and more species will disappear forever, and if birds are disappearing, then so are mammals, insects, flowers, trees, everything.... all nature is linked, and that includes US. For my part, I can only continue to share my love of these magical creatures with my photos, and hopefully continue to open the eyes and ears of the uninitiated. 🙏 EVERYONE is a bird lover in waiting. Everyone can get the same amount of joy from our feathered friends as I do, and you will be infinitely happier with birds in your life, believe me. ♥️ Thank you for reading. 🙏 Here's a Goldfinch peering over cherry blossom in my Somerset garden. 😊🐦🥰