Nature's Way…

A few years back i found an old cast iron owl lantern and hung it from my porch. I never put a candle in it, but i have an affinity with owls and thought it was a nice piece of commercially made sculptural "art" to decorate the front of the house. I soon found that the open lace design meant to allow light out also functioned well at letting things in. So it was a nice surprise a few years back when small birds took to nesting in it's base every spring.

©David Sorcher 2011

Four years ago the first eggs appeared in the lantern nest and i made a few images of the chicks. I didn't spent too much time with it, but i did at least want to document the moment. 

©David Sorcher 2011

It was so wonderful having nature come right to my doorstep. I had just purchased a 105mm macro, a lens i have really come to love since, and this was a great opportunity to capture the unfolding drama of nature without having to travel, well, anywhere at all, to view it. The only problem shooting into the nest is that the openings in the ironwork are quite small so a hazy vignette was created by the edges as i tried to shoot through them. Let's just call it "artistic blur". ;-)

I know the birds returned the following year, but for some reason or other i ignored them, at least photographically. I enjoyed the morning chirpings at feeding time, but did nothing to record the unfolding events. 

Last year i thought i might give a documentary project on this a go when i noticed the birds busily preparing the nest for yet another year. I waited for the chicks to hatch, but before i could get started disaster struck. Over night all the chicks mysteriously disappeared. There was no sign of struggle or the birds themselves, but they were far too young to have flown away. 

©David Sorcher 2014

So i got a little excited when i noticed two bird spending a lot of time around the owl lantern this spring. It was clear that they were preparing the nest and i decided that i would attempt a more in depth nature study this year. I watched as the little blue-green eggs appeared in the nest, one a day over the next five days. This time i would start before the eggs hatched. Since i recently got an iPhone and was experimenting with that camera i tried shooting with the phone at first. One advantage i immediately discovered was that the lens is so small on the iPhone that i was able to shoot into the nest without being partially blocked by the edges of the metalwork. As the eggs began to hatch i envisioned a shot of a full nest of hungry hatchlings with their beaks raised upwards in anticipation of their next meal.  

©David Sorcher 2014

Alas, this was not to be. That very night disaster struck for the second year in a row. The nest was empty, two dead chicks were down on the porch. There was no sign of the remaining three birds and i can only image that they had been eaten. Small as the holes in the metal work are, they were not small enough to protect the birds from some aggressive predator. Nature's way…. 

These hatchlings were tiny and while i grabbed the iPhone at first to record this tragedy i quickly became aware that some more serious equipment was necessary for close, clear, sharp images. So i grabbed my DSLR and the 105mm macro. What had started as a nature documentary on birth, life and spring had now become another image for my Future Fossils project. The cycles of life and death…so it goes…