Photographer Covers Songbird Slaughter | National Geographic

I had never photographed birds before
I’m not a I wasn’t a bird watcher and my
friends who are all conflict
photographers like me that’s what I’ve
done most of my career said who were all
going to live Libya and Syria that year
said you’re taking picture of birds I
was going on for people who do love
birds they go all over the world just to
get like a fleeting glimpse like that’s
what is so enchanting about birds is
that you see them from a distance just
for a moment and it’s so magical they’re
free the first time that I saw a bird
was to see them hanging upside down
mother wins all like they were crucified
struggling the joints of their wings
broken legs broken hanging upside down
dying and you know you’re not supposed
to see birds like that like that is
really um that was the first time that I
understood what that I wasn’t doing a
natural history story I was doing a
conflict story and I was working that
activist they realized the quickest way
to remove the SAP and not injure the
bird further was to just dissolve the
tree sap in your mouth he’s it’s sweet
and it dissolves on your tongue so they
would just hold the bird in their palms
and they put the feet of the bird in
their mouth and suck on the feet and
suck on the feathers and then you let
the bird go and it’s such a tender thing
actually to see them do this and I did
it too sometimes you know I took
pictures but I also helped pull birds
down and release them and you know to to
hold a tiny bird or so fragile the hold
in your hand and actually put part of it
in you
mouths and then to let it free it’s very
powerful like life-affirming thing to do
actually
you