Minutes Before Sunset by Shannon A. Thompson

I became addicted to learning as much as I could about the birds in my backyard and brought my camera everywhere I went– on walks along the beach, kayaking, on bike rides, and on drives–so I would always be ready to capture a chance encounter with a rare species.

Photographing birds introduced me to diverse species that I had never noticed before, despite coming to the cottage since I was a kid. Birds were particularly challenging subjects to practice on because most of them don’t pose or wait for the photographer to be ‘ready’. To give myself a break from virtual teaching and long hours in front of a screen, I went for walks behind my cottage, and worked on my photography skills by taking pictures of wildlife. My brother even mailed me some spring and summer clothes from Toronto via Canada Post: a few t-shirts, shorts, a couple of summer dresses to save me a drive.

I somehow unexpectedly and unintentionally fell into birding, much like other people fell into baking or puzzling or home fitness during the COVID-19 pandemic.Īfter I was forced to cancel a March Break trip to Ecuador, I went to my parents’ cottage in Norway Bay, Quebec for what I had thought would be three weeks: a week of Spring Break followed by two additional weeks of school closures as we waited for the pandemic to clear. * The first time I saw a Rose-breasted Grosbeak was in May 2020, even though they migrate to my cottage area every year. I take another photo just before the woodpecker flies away. It’s similar to the feeling that I get at the end of a yoga class, when I’m lying on my back with my eyes closed. I lose myself in the peacefulness of the moment, like being mesmerized by a flickering campfire.įor a few glorious minutes, I forget about the pandemic and the lockdown and Donald Trump and virtual schooling and the sad reality that, due to travel restrictions, I haven’t seen my boyfriend since 2019. I stand silently in the snow, watching the woodpecker hammer frozen bark in a calming drumbeat. I take a few photos, but the woodpecker is so high up in the tree that I know it will be difficult to see clearly. It’s a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a bird I’d first observed a few months earlier on a canoe-camping trip in Frontenac Park. It’s not a Hairy or a Downy– the ‘regulars’. Using my zoom lens like a pair of binoculars, I fixate on a pale-bodied woodpecker with a distinct cherry tomato nape on the back of its head, and black and white checkered wings. I’ve seen that bird before, but not here. Birding has helped me appreciate moments of beauty, like seeing this Common Loon come up beside my kayak, during this difficult time in history

Minutes Before Sunset by Shannon A. Thompson