Imperfect doves

click photo to enlarge
"Where there is perfection there is no story to tell."
Ben Okri, Nigerian author (b.1951)

Perfection is over-rated, especially in the visual arts. It can be seductive, rather like the "hook" in a pop song, but it is usually something that we tire of after being exposed to it a few times. Too often it is predictable in its completeness and that ultimately makes for an unsatisfying experience. Imperfection, on the other hand, can succeed by hinting at the perfection that might have been. The flaw in something that mars the perfection frequently becomes the focus of the piece, the thing that makes it interesting.

I was thinking about this as I processed this photograph of a line of doves on the pinnacles of an ornate building in Seville. How much more perfect and much less satisfying would it have been if all the doves had the same pose and faced the same way, and all of the pinnacles had a bird perched on it. It would simply be a picture of stacked lines, each repeating the same motif across the frame. Thankfully nature, in the form of the doves, gave the shot the imperfection that made it a more interesting image.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: White Doves, Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares, Seville
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Doves, pigeons and breeding seasons

click photo to enlarge

One of the things I remember from my younger days, a time when I pursued bird-watching with a deeper interest than I do now, is the length of the breeding season of doves and pigeons. To my knowledge it exceeded that of any of the other species of British birds. The rock dove, woodpigeon and others of the Family Columbidae, often begin nesting in February and sometimes don't complete the process until November, having had several broods in the intervening months. That may, in part, account for the very large numbers of woodpigeon that the country now supports.

The collared dove is also a member of this family of birds. When I lived in the Yorkshire Dales I never saw a single example. However, my move to eastern England in 1971 immediately remedied that, and I soon became familiar with their insistent and monotonous call from March through to October. Given that this relative newcomer to our shores (it arrived in numbers only in the middle of the last century) has quickly achieved the status of one of the least liked birds, it cannot be good news for many that it is a prolific breeder.

I don't know a great deal about the habits of feral pigeons, but the fact that they are, in the main, descended from the wild rock dove, suggests that they too will have a long breeding season. Consequently, when I saw this white dove and a second parti-coloured bird in the porch at Sutterton church recently, I assumed that they were reconnoitring it for a nest site rather than seeking any kind of shelter. The bird in the photograph allowed us to get quite close, and never left its perch. Only when I came to process my photograph did it occur to me that it was trying to give some symmetry to the carvings on the column capital by reflecting the stone bird on the left!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On