Casey Lowder and Bonnie Gunn
We met one fortuitous night in Chapel Hill at the Cat’s Cradle while listening and moving to beautiful sounds.
We came from opposite sides of the world with nearly inverse life experiences but we fell in love and have been together ever since.
One of our shared passions is basking in the beauty and awesomeness of nature. This led us to photography as an attempt to capture a sliver of some of the things we find most beautiful and interesting.
We aim to share some of our best efforts here, although we know full well how limited the images are in conveying the real  magnificence of the things that we point the camera toward.
Waxwing
Soon after I got my first set of binoculars and started trying to identify more birds, we bought a copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s Eastern Birds field guide at a used book store for $3.95. Bonnie was flipping through it and said something like ‘Ah, I want to see a Cedar Waxwing.’ I had heard my grandmother talk about Cedar Waxwings coming to her birdbath but I had never seen one and thought they were rare birds. I told her not to get her hopes up and that we would probably never see one.
The very next weekend we went camping in New Hampshire. I was doing some snorkeling in Chocorua Lake looking for bass and pike. Bonnie was sunning on the shore after a picnic. She called me over saying ‘I think I see Cedar Waxwings.’ ‘Highly doubt it,’ I said. We could hear light twittering that sounded sort of like crickets. I got the binoculars and scanned the tree branches where I saw movement. Sure enough, I could see that bright yellow tipped tail, a beautiful soft gradient of blueish gray fading into light brown, and the bold black mask on the crested head. The views were brief and partially obscured but it was such a thrill that we started pursuing birding in full. Now I bird every day and keep track of my observations on eBird.
We now see Cedar Waxwings on a regular basis and they remain my favorite bird.
Waxwing Imagery 