My favorite tree

When I was a kid, our rural home was ringed by the hills of Northern Michigan.  On one of those hills, the one visible from my place at our kitchen table, was a gigantic lone spruce. It towered above the lesser trees that made up the forest surrounding it. I admired it each and every mealtime.

When we moved into our apartment here at Waitakere Gardens, in Henderson, New Zealand, I immediately spotted this lone tree against the horizon as I stood on our balcony.  It's a Norfolk Island Pine, rather than a spruce, but, in my opinion, it dominates its surroundings almost as well as my boyhood favorite did.  It became my new, old-age favorite. 

I have come to rely on it to provide photographic opportunities.  Today's post will highlight this tree, with pictures which have been taken for the most part during sunrises, many times with birds decorating the space around it, and sometimes in the fog.  

I'll start with my most recent photo. When I saw my tree in the fog that morning, I hoped that a bird or birds would fly by. I held my camera on it for several minutes before this gull graced us with its presence.  

I often share my sunrise pictures with a friend, Trevor, who also loves photography, and I generally claim that I employ bird-handlers who release birds at just the right moment for me to catch them in my pictures.  Here are two that were released perfectly. (The real trick, and the reason my bird-handler charges so much, is to get the birds to flap their wings in unison.) These two have clearly been working together for years and are in high demand, among photographers around Auckland.  

This is one of my all-time favorite shots.  I wish my handler could have released the bird a little closer though.  I've tried zooming in, to make the bird appear larger, but then the framing of the scene by the palm fronds disappears, and they add depth to the picture.  

In most of these, I wish the birds were just a little closer.  Oh, well, I'm lucky to have them at all. 

Not long after I started using this tree as a subject of many pictures, I went walking in search of it. I found it in the back yard of a home less than a mile, as the crow flies, from our apartment. We're seeing just it's tip.  It really is quite a massive tree. My boyhood spruce surpassed it, I'm sure, but when I found it, I saw that this one's trunk, at ground level, was approaching a meter across, so it's definitely an impressive specimen and a suitable substitute for my long-lost Castile giant.     -djf