Life with Suzie - Bling in the bush

Suzie and I can go on a jaunt to the same place and when you look at the photos we have taken you could be excused for wondering if we had actually been to the same place.

I tend to see the big picture and include as much of the scenery in my pictures as possible. For many years my pictures were typical holiday snapshots. If there is a bird or insect in the vicinity I will find it and photograph it.

"Where did you see that bird?" she will ask when looking at my photographs.

"It has a nest above the first door we entered," I reply.

"Oh," she says as she shows me the picture of a subtly back-lit stained glass window that she was photographing at the time I found the bird, "I never saw them.".

Suzie has an artistic eye and will find subjects that I miss every time. She focusses in on interesting details and sees things from a different angle to most people. She gets high on colour and interesting patterns. When we are travelling  she will always be the first to see the sun beams radiating through the clouds.

All I can do when I see her pictures is scratch my head and wonder how I missed that.

Then recently when we were on one of our many trips to the Addo Elephant National Park I noticed that she was stopping to photograph birds. "This is unusual," I thought, but said nothing until we rounded a corner and with great enthusiasm she exclaimed, "Look at that bird!"

At the same time I said, "Wow, look at the sun beams coming through the clouds!"

We looked at one another and laughed. There had been a role reversal.

"Since when did you develop an interst in birds," I asked.

"I don't mind birds," she replied, "As long as they have bing on them. I am still not interested in little dull grey and brown birds."

The result of that encounter is that the name of the cape glossy starling has been changed to "bling bird" aka the LBBB or the little blue bling bird.