To preen or not to preen - that is the question 😀

Ever wonder who birds hairdressers are? Well - it is a DIY exercise!
Birds preen themselves!😁

Birds preen feathers and Men preen EGOs!

This is one of the profound observations I have made as I engaged in wildlife photography.

As I watched various birds preen in the wild, I also watched the egos of fellow photographers and bird watchers take over and turn them into P%#@$ ('bad individuals' let us say...😄)

While Preening is good for birds, I am not so sure that it is a good thing for egos. Hence the title of this post - to preen or not to preen! What do you think?

When Neli challenged us once again with Preening pics and posted amazing shots herself, I had to go digging to find pics that were of unusual birds preening.

While I see preening birds right around my house too, I find it more challenging and wonderful to click some wild birds preening. It is such a calming thing to see a wild bird, which could be on it's wing any time it wished, sit calmly and preen it's feathers carefully. That calm somehow seems to transfer to me. The beautiful colors, the feather formations and form of the preening bird just forms a pretty picture - like this Yellow footed green pigeon preening on top of a tall tree in the forest.

Preening beauty!
My own click

I also was lucky to see a leaf birds open it's wing and preen, perched on a dry tree at the edge of a valley so that I could get this nice click...

Wing maintenance! - Leaf bird
My own click

Sometimes, the birds use their claws too for preening. ** Especially, if they find an itch on the face, then they end up scratching with their leg, like a dog and enjoying the scratch with an intense expression on their face.** Like this little pratincole preening...

Ahhhh - that feels good!- Little pratincole preening feathers under jaw
My own click

Sometimes, I find a bird sitting on a solitary tree. Calmly preening one wing and then the other. The scene is serene and immensely beautiful - especially if the birds is a rufous treepie, with it's long tail and bright orangish brown color contrasting with the green hues of the forest around...

Serene beauty - Rufous treepie preening
My own click

As usual, I am in a dilemma on which pic to pick as my entry for the contest. I love them all dearly because I know the effort and story behind each of them. However, I have to pick one. So, here is my entry for the #SMAP 83 contest in it's original form...

Yellow footed green pigeon preening - My entry for #SMAP 83

I just love the colors, the golden early morning light, the form of the pigeon and the beauty of the whole frame. What do you think?

Hope you enjoyed the 'Bird preening' 😀 Please feel free to comment and let me know your views ...

A big thank you for support

Thanks to c/hive-106444 (Feathered friends community) for providing this wonderful opportunity to present my experience and photographs. Thanks to @barbara-orenya and @melinda010100 for all the support and encouragement to this community. Special thanks to @nelinoeva also for starting the Species hunt initiative. My posts are not exactly in that format but have all the necessary info and Good original Photos. Further guidance will be very much welcome.

Thanks to HIVE for this wonderful platform. Thanks also to @adalger and @dna.org for encouraging me by recognizing some of my posts as worthy of Densifying nature project.
Further, thanks to Amazing nature community for welcoming me and showing me their love on some of my posts.

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Note: All images and collages in this blog are created by me, based on photos clicked by me personally and/or free vector images from Pixabay. Any other sources, if used, are indicated as image credits below the picture.
Quotes used, if not credited, are either from unknown authors or are proverbial old sayings.

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