Birds of Windermere
2025 - Present
Every day after work, while waiting
for the 599, I walk down to a spot between the bus stop and the
amusement arcades on the shoreline of Lake Windermere. I watch the birds and
the tourists, and the strange interactions between the two. Birds on
arms, hands, legs. Geese always pecking at other geese. Children nearly
losing little fingers to big bird mouths. Birds looking for food and
being fed — being overfed. I watch the mad dash of a menagerie of species when one birds notices
another human being with more bird feed: they waddle, rush, and fly
toward a new target. Both subjects look curiously at me and my camera. At the tourists, I
always smile; at the birds especially the larger ones I grimace.
They look at me as if I might have something to give, but in fact I am
only there to take. I can see their small bird brains whirring. They are
so used to food from people that they don’t know what to make of me
waving a camera in their faces. I’m not the only one recording this.
Friends, families and sometimes the subjects of my pictures are
photographing and videoing themselves, for posterity or for social
media, I guess. This small patch of lakeshore by England’s largest lake,
picturesque next to the amusement arcades? Not so much. I know how
Wordsworth felt about the railways; I imagine he would have hated it
here.