Maps and Lists, Photos and Thoughts.

Me watching the sunsetting in the zodiac off Saibai Island far, far north QLD (photo Carol Suter)

First a couple of personal notes. The internet is how I keep in touch with far flung friends and loved ones.

Physically, I am doing okay for my age and mileage. After 7 months of “smaller portions, wiser choices and more active”, I am comfortably at my goal weight. Hallelujah. My migraines are around and will be until they aren’t. I do have 70 year old plumbing that seems to have gone out of warrantee a few years ago and continues to vex me. I am having a small surgery again regarding that Wednesday week with a night in hospital. Oddly, considering my anxiety issues, I do not get anxious about surgery itself. That is completely out of my control and they give me drugs. Both are good for my ADHD, anxiety/depression neurodivergent brain.

Okay, now on with what I’ve been writing about.

It occurred to me recently that my bird list is like a map! (And I do love maps). It’s a map of my birding life. Each Life Bird represents a location, a town, a place somewhere across the vast continent and territories of Australia. I used to have a big map of the USA with pins in each of the hundreds of cities and towns where I had gigged. I’d love to do that with birds and maybe I will someday. For now, I can follow this trail of birds by reading down my list looking at the dates and locations. For me, it is one of the most wonderful parts of birding and keeping a bird list. I love my list (783 in Oz now).

My old USA gig map. I did at least one show in every town with a pin

Below are the maps on the walls of my study. And one (Queensland) on my closet door. I have run out of wall space and I love that big map of QLD that goes all the way up the Torres Strait including the northern most Australian islands.

As time and age hurtle along, choices become more limited. I can spark genuine joy in the memories of my many amazing experiences. When life sucks ‘right now’, I can still picture in my mind other places and happier times. As we get older it is increasingly the memoires that bring joy.

Sometimes remembering anything is asking a lot of the brain. So I write, and I write, and I need to share what I have written. It helps to make the experiences (and myself) real. Without external validation, I do not exist. Sad but oh so very true (you know you can buy these books).

I also look back at my photos. They are important to me as well, but my relationship with photography has changed over the years and particularly over the last few years. Photography has leaped forward technology-wise and I have chosen not to leap with it, or at least not to leap as far. I still take my camera birding, but it is (was) a 2009 camera. I have thousands upon thousands of photos taken with that camera. Here is a Blue-headed Vireo from 2014...

However! Only last week I came across an amazing deal on a lightly used 7D Mark ll. I have messed with it a little bit and so far, crossed fingers, I love it. My old push-pull, white 100-400mm lens is still working fine and of course clicks right into the Mark II. So now take birding pictures with a newer, old camera.

Fairy Martin on the track yesterday at the WTP with the new old camera

I bought my first ‘good’ camera, the classic 7D, in the spring of 2009. Some people thought my bird photos were really good. I do have a decent ‘eye’ as they call it. I have a dear friend in the US who has about 8 of my photos framed and hung in the rooms of his medical practice. They truly looked beautiful. I imagine he is the only doctor in Virginia, USA with a framed Zebra Finch in one of his rooms.& Nowadays my photographs are fairly ordinary compared to what is achievable with the new technologies. F-ing AI is a game changer. That it is a game I will not be playing. No, not if it was ever so.

Someone with modern tech knowledge can already manipulate photos into ‘something’ far beyond the photo that they originally shot. Soon (now?) they won’t even need to take a photograph. Just ask AI for a picture of whatever bird they’d like and ‘poof’ they will have one. Stringers are going to have a field day (without needing to go into the field). Oh yes, AI ‘writes’ too: books, articles, comments and posts on social media, songs, etc and so on and on. Talent is being replace by ‘tech-craft’. Heart is being replaced by technology. It is going to get worse. Yes, and worse and worse. I am honestly glad I am old and will not be around a lot longer. This is not my world in so many ways, both globally and personally. That is not going to change and I have run slam-out of acceptance. 

Sending love from a real, live heart ❤️