Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Heron And The Blackbird

Did you ever wish you were someone else? Did you ever wish you were bigger, smaller, more attractive? What about being the one that everybody else likes? All your troubles would be gone. That can sound pretty good sometimes, even to a bird.

There is a heron and a blackbird in this picture. The blackbird seems to be looking at the heron with admiration. Everybody likes the heron. We all want pictures of this beautiful majestic bird. But what about the little blackbird? It seems common and ordinary.

Maybe the blackbird wants to be the one that we all admire. But how could it do that? Maybe the only way is to become a heron itself. The heron looks so big and graceful to the blackbird. The blackbird can dream and dream that it was the heron. Or it could stay close to the heron just to be near that beautiful creature.

The blackbird is forgetting one thing though. The heron may be a beautiful bird, but so is the blackbird. The heron doesn't have the beautiful red markings on its wings that the red-winged blackbird does. When the heron takes flight can it flash it's wings like this beautiful red-winged blackbird? I don't think so!

When the smaller red-winged blackbird began to understand that it was just as beautiful as the big heron, it decided that it was okay to just be itself. Its unique appearance made it beautiful, so why would it want to be something else?

Realizing all of this, the red-winged blackbird decided it didn't need to worship the heron after all. So it spread its wings and leaped up into the sky and flew away. Watching it fly away, the heron gazed at the blackbird and thought to itself, "I wish I was a beautiful red-winged blackbird."

14 comments:

  1. Awesome shots Ratty, and I am glad you changed your comments to a pop up screen. There is something wrong w/ my computer and I can't comment on blogs that have embedded comments in them. You are getting really good with the bird photographs!

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  2. Pretty good story there! It's got a similar theme to the newest project I hinted at on my blog that I haven't talked about yet.

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  3. I like the moral lesson in this post..Great pictures!

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  4. You are giving a moral lesson, and you bring me back to some old times.
    Good try and great story.

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  5. what a great story! you find beauty in everything and that, my friend, is one of the reasons that i love coming to your blog.

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  6. Ratty, great pics and wonderful story. We can all learn a lesson from this story.

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  7. Great post and great photos Ratty!! I love how you wrote that!!

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  8. What a most wonderful and inspiring post. Something we should all think about and the photos were wonderful as well.

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  9. We have a lot of redwinged blackbirds here and I love seeing that flash of red when they fly!! The heron is majestic...each have their own beauty, you are correct!

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  10. Great photos with a great story. I like heron too but the each of these birds are unique in their own way. Interesting to be discover. They are migratory birds here.

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  11. Great coverage on Heron bird. Thank you for sharing the knowledge :)

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  12. Ratty,
    Beautiful photos for a lovely story. There is definitely a lesson in your story, one we all should remember and heed.
    Thank you for this wonderful post.
    SQ

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  13. oh yes, i did wish i was shorter when i was in elementary and high school (college i used my height to my advantage just like the blackbird). though i am not really tall for here, but back in my country, i was always standing so tall among my classmates, even boys. i love your lesson here that goes with the pictures.

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  14. Thank you for that, Ratty. What a wonderful reminder that we're all unique and wonderful, just the way we are :)

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