My first bird in flight

My first "Narnia" and a fateful encounter

Every nature photographer probably remembers THAT photograph. For me it was 13 March 2016. With the "Canon 1100D" I had at the time and a "Tamron 70-300" lens, I managed to capture cranes walking — and later flying — across the fields. Although I had photographed a few birds before, this time was different. The feeling was like stepping into Narnia, whose doors open only for you. A place where, from a safe distance and without disturbing anything, you can watch another, wild world. A world that gets along perfectly well without you.

That sense of touching wild nature changed me completely. Of course, the adrenaline also awakened a kind of hunting instinct. That day I understood — this is my Narnia.

A black silhouette in a grey sky

In the middle of that same summer, on 23 July 2016, while walking in the yard of the homestead, a bird's silhouette suddenly appeared overhead. The sky was cloudy, even dark, though the clock showed midday. By then I already had a "Canon 70D" with a "Canon 100-400" lens in my hands. The settings were whatever they happened to be — I only had time to aim and press the shutter.

Looking through the viewfinder, the bird seemed like nothing more than a black silhouette against a grey sky, but later, while editing the photo, I managed to pull out a little more detail. It was a red kite. I'll admit, even to this day I don't have a better photograph of one.

At the time I really didn't know what bird it was, but it looked incredibly beautiful — I had never seen anything like it. Only later, once I identified the species, did I realise how many people have never seen one. In Lithuania, only about 30 pairs of these birds breed. It was precisely this photograph that pushed me to dive deeper into bird photography and to start wondering about what flies and lives around me.

A photographer's etiquette and a promise for the future

I will surely meet it again. And I will photograph it again. But this time the goal won't be the photograph itself, but the process — not disturbing its peace, never altering its natural behaviour in any way. And if I'm lucky, there will be a frame too. A photographer's etiquette is mandatory when photographing any wild animal, and especially those listed in Lithuania's Red Book.