November 23 2005

Text By Catherine Jamieson

You can almost hear the quiet that precedes this moment. The birds on the ground, picking through the turned earth; a veritable buffet table of good things. Was it a sound from above? Or from the ground? Or was it the photographer herself that ushered them into the air, flying this way and that, low along the ground and perpendicular to the pinpoint horizon?

At first it seems like the sound of hundreds of wings brushing against the air but soon it evolves into a breathy pattern, a whisper that runs through the flock, from one dark shape to another: head for the highway.