I took myself to Kensington a week or maybe more ago, hoping to get some great bird photos. There’s always something to see out there, and the warblers are migrating, so maybe…I hoped.

But the entire time I was at the park I had camera lens focus issues.

My images were so bad I almost forgot about them. But regardless of the quality, I’ll share with you the best of what I consider a pretty sad batch of images, just because no matter what I capture, even if it’s not much of anything new, I’m always glad I went to Kensington.

And I’m always glad to share with you my adventures, as tame as they often are.

A lot of the time on this walk I took pictures of plants. Because, as I told one photographer last year who was noticing me focusing on berries instead of birds, plants don’t move.

In fact, this trip to Kensington I spent most of my time looking at the way light played in the dark woods.

Turns out it plays rather well, don’t you think?

But of course the birds kept bringing me back as they hovered over me, sometimes landing on my camera lens, asking for something to eat. They are very persistent.

It’s pretty hard to ignore them, even if you aren’t happy with the images you’re getting.

Sometimes I just feed them and don’t even bother trying to capture the magic.

Other times the birds and the light work together and I get something interesting.

I had so much trouble on this walk through the woods, capturing anything the way I wanted to, it got discouraging.

Focusing on plants as a last resort I wandered some more.

I eventually decided it just wasn’t going to be my day, and headed back toward the car.

But just before I got to the parking lot I saw one more trail, one that headed out to where I sometimes saw unusual stuff. It wasn’t a long trail.

Maybe it was worth a bit more walking.

And there I found a dead tree, quite a ways away, but full of some sort of woodpecker family.

I thought it might be a group of red headed woodpeckers. The light made it difficult to see anything but silhouettes. But looking at the images later I saw the yellow on the underside of a wing, and I believe this was a flicker family.

Regardless, they were very busy hopping around the tree looking for bugs and flitting from branch to branch.

And while I was focused on them I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, way down at the other end of the bridge. Something fliting around the touch-me-not flowers, far from where I was standing.

I shot blindly, not seeing anything in my viewfinder…

…but hoping for something. And the most beautiful female hummingbird showed up when I looked at the images at home.

She sure made me smile.

And then there was a noise on the other side of the bridge and I found this little female common yellowthroat. She made my day!

So the moral of my story is don’t give up. Walk down that little extra trail even if all you’ve had before is disappointment.

You never know what you’ll find. It could be magic.

And Kensington never disappoints.