Too Busy Looking At The Scenery

    There is a idiom that one "cannot see the forest for the trees" which refers to spending far too much time paying attention to the details that you cannot see the overall picture.  It really has nothing to do with trees or forests or much of anything to do with Mother Nature in general but is rather to point out a flaw found in a lot of us.  We become far to focused on things...maybe even to the point of being nitpicky.  It is those pesky details that get in the way of our happiness.  Then, there are those that are just the opposite.  They brush off details as not important.  If the whole picture is good, why bother with the little things?  They have a way of twisting things to where the trees (details) are not important.  In my case, I seem to vacillate between the two ideas.  At times, a good bit of effort is spent delving into the finest detail while during other times, I just view things as one big grand world and let it go at that.

  A while back, the morning sunrise took my breath away.  The view was to perfection and I could do nothing but sit in awe of the handiwork of the Master Artist.  It never occurred to me to do anything but stare ahead at what was being laid out before me.  After photographing the sunrise (as I inevitably do), I left the pier feeling as if this wondrous sight had been created just for me.  My day had been started magnificently!  What more could one ask?  Then, I checked my pictures and found that I had totally missed an equally impressive event by not seeing the details that made up the overall spectacle that I had witnessed.  There was one detail that I had overlooked.

  Between that big, ole ball of a sun and the pier, there not only stands the gazebo and bridge of a nearby neighborhood, there are the ever-present power lines.  Not that any of those are impressive but the hundreds upon hundreds of birds that had roosted on the lines overnight were pretty mind-boggling.  Stretched as far as the scene would allow, nigh on a thousand birds were on the lines. The birds had gone completely unnoticed as I looked at the big picture.  How could I miss nigh on a thousand birds?  Goodness!  It took enlarging the photograph on my computer before I could grasp how many were actually there.  (Yep, I counted. 922 were in one photo!  That is a lot of birds to miss!)  The cropped photo below shows almost just a small portion of the birds as the lines stretched much further.

  Hopefully, the weather will permit me to take a jaunt to the pier at sunrise again tomorrow.  I want to see if the birds are still there or if they were just migrating through the area.  Oh, how grand it would be to have a camera lens strong enough to zoom in far enough to determine the type of bird that seek refuge on those power lines!  It does make me wonder if anyone in that neighborhood even noticed...or if they were like me and did see the "trees for the forest" or, in this case, did not see the birds for the sunrise.  Its all in the details, folks.  I need to pay attention!