Some things happen so easily, so spontaneously, that by the time you become aware of them, they’ve already long been part of you, and you can’t remember who you were before – Before? Was there a before? But I’ve been doing this since forever!

After three years of landscape photography, and a photo book project about the nature of the Vysočina region, CZ, I’d grown to believe landscape photography really was my thing. Then, in April 2023, I went to Svalbard for the first time. I photographed an Arctic fox, then Svalbard reindeer, then a polar bear, and that changed everything.

I knew instantly I wanted to take on wildlife photography and learn how to do it right. I had to, because I had to make sure I’d be better prepared for my next Arctic wildlife encounter, and anything photography-related I did till then would be practice toward it, toward the next fox, the next bear.

As soon as I got back from Svalbard, I rethought my camera gear from scratch. I kept one all-round mid-length lens for landscape. All other gear-related purchases or purchase plans I’ve been making since then have been instrumental to improving at wildlife photography.

I thought that the best (and easiest) way to prepare for the next Arctic experience would be to practise on birds. I’ll be taking photos of blackbirds and pigeons till the next time I’m there, if I have to. But as I started going on trips to my usual local spots, I realised there were so many more bird species than the blackbirds and pigeons I’d always known about. I also started photographing herons, woodpeckers, great tits, greylag geese, robins- the list goes on.

I realised that, yes, I was (I am) still getting ready for the next Arctic wildlife encounter. There’s a part of me that feels like she’s constantly working, progressing toward it: planning the next trip, pining for those views, thinking about it nonstop. It did, however, get more complicated than that. Birding also grew into a thing of its own, a trigger for discovery and exploration, a hobby – a hobby? A passion? An interest? An obsession?

Birding is special, pervasive, transformative. It’s not just about spotting birds and photographing them, and it goes well beyond the time and space limits imposed by the one trip or walk you’re on. It takes over everything you see or do, it changes the way you look at all things around you. All of them, not just birds. Birding makes you infinitely more aware of the environment that surrounds you, more receptive to the sensory stimuli from the outside: colours, sounds, imperceptible movements you weren’t used to noticing, let alone looking for.

I now try to see as many birds in my everyday life as I can. Some I still fail to spot, usually because the bird is too far high on a tree branch, or I can hear the call but can’t take the time to search for it here and there around me. I’m fairly sure I do see a lot more than I used to, many of which were there all the time, yet I didn’t see because I wasn’t looking. Now I look as much as I can all the time, and it makes all the difference. I’ve only just started reading Ed Yong’s ‘An Immense World’, but I already agree with the author when he writes: ‘When we pay attention to other animals, our own world expands and deepens.’

I stare at the great tits flying nonstop from branch to branch of the trees along the footpath to the garage. I glance toward the river as soon as I get to the bridge near the office, because once in a while I find a grey heron taking a dip in its shallow waters. I watch, transfixed, as a green woodpecker momentarily halts its flight on a tree trunk in the small park I walk through every morning on my way to work. These brief, fleeting moments usually last but a few seconds, and invariably happen when I don’t have my camera with me. Yet they’re no less powerful only because I’ve got no photos of them. Their true power lies in the joy, the privilege of experiencing them, being there, seeing them happen.

When you see a bird, you’re never just ‘seeing a bird’. There’s a lot more to it than that. Birds are reliable ambassadors of the complex ecosystems they inhabit. They are efficient agents of biodiversity, advocates for our heavily threatened environment. What’s more, birds are simply wonderful to look at. Zoom in on a cormorant in flight, the spread wings of a sea eagle, the fuzzy belly of a robin, and watch in wonder.

Birds are amazing, and while I do keep preparing for the next Arctic trip, I also do want to keep looking at as many of them as I can spot.