Free as a Bird

It sounds beautiful, although for birds, of course, things are far less romantic.

If you think about it, birds in the sky don’t really embody abstract freedom. Each is preoccupied with its own concerns: some are searching for food, others are patrolling their territory. Each has its own instincts, responsibilities, and the constant need to survive. This is not soaring for its own sake, but continuous work dictated by nature.

In these photographs, there is a bird of prey — most likely a kite. And there is nothing carefree about its flight. It is the flight of a hunter: focused, purposeful, and driven by a single task. It does not simply glide; it scans for prey, reads air currents, and controls its altitude. If this is freedom at all, it is a kind that demands not a carefree state, but attention and skill.

So yeah, the expression free as a bird, originally an image of absolute liberty, has over time become nothing more than a romantic cliché.

Southern Urals, Russia.
June, 2020.
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