Four Feathers Studio

July’s photograph captures my Wonderland encounter with a Lincoln’s Sparrow. For all I know, they may be here all summer and fall entertaining in the evenings with lavish parties for their fellow sparrows and the like, but I’ve only had the pleasure of seeing them once on an early morning last October (which makes me think they were only passing through on their way south for the winter.) Hopping up onto the branch and into the frame, it was their coloring that caught my eye and I knew immediately that this was someone new to me. Lincoln’s Sparrows have a soft, buffy-blush color that decorates their breast—something the other sparrows in Wonderland do not have, made all the more beautiful with the sharp and distinct brown streaks that are often described as “neat” or “crisp.” The crispness truly took my breath away, as if painted on with the finest of brushes, and the "buffy" blush wash of color on its breast—a hue so delicate and warm was made even softer and warmer by the morning sun. 

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The mutual gaze is what makes me return to this photograph again and again, a moment felt very intensely through the lens of the camera, when my heart expanded full to bursting with tenderness and awe. Not quite sure what was happening in their little heart or what they were thinking, but the little girl in me, the eternal romantic, was hoping it was the same. Here’s to the child in all of us—the wonderstruck, the awestruck, the playful and imaginative spirits that speak with the natural world because they feel that it listens.