I love these sorts of photos – visually interesting and very feeling and thought provoking in the layers, transparencies. I have one that happened by mistake in a historical museum where the camera actually also malfunctioned in a really cool way! – very time-shifty.
This was in an exotic “pets” store off Broadway and 80-something. Quite shocking to come across this bird among the offices and apartments, gazing across the street at the glassy horizon.
I’d have thought that the Wild Bird Conservation Act would prevent such things, but it apparently allows for “personal pet purposes when the applicant meets certain criteria.”
And using this CITES webpage to search on Great Blue Turacos reveals that at least some West African countries have considerable yearly quotas for legally exporting them: http://www.cites.org/eng/resources/species.html
Thank you for looking this up, Jim. I was shocked to see the bird there, thinking it must surely be illegal, but some internet poking revealed that it was legal. The trade in wild birds has become ore tightly regulated lately (bird flu scares help) but there is still a huge black/gray market. In addition to conservation problems, I think there are animal welfare issues although I don’t know enough about this particular species to comment (some wild birds seem fine in captivity, others not). The end of Julie Zickefoose’s book, The Bluebird Effect, has some wise words of experience about this.
And Blake: “A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.”
David George Haskell 
Couldn’t you kidnap it and take it back home?
Tempting. But where is home?
I find this an exquisite image of our world’s tragic dislocations, and amongst them, two beings in fraught rapport. In other words, great photo.
Thank you. There are many layers here and they all reflect a slightly different story. Dislocation is a unifying theme, perhaps.
I love these sorts of photos – visually interesting and very feeling and thought provoking in the layers, transparencies. I have one that happened by mistake in a historical museum where the camera actually also malfunctioned in a really cool way! – very time-shifty.
Yes, partial reflection/translucence produces interesting effects. Especially if they are unexpected.
We’ve come across them uptown before… but only at the Bronx Zoo. In what kind of space was it? Somebody’s ground floor apartment?
This was in an exotic “pets” store off Broadway and 80-something. Quite shocking to come across this bird among the offices and apartments, gazing across the street at the glassy horizon.
I’d have thought that the Wild Bird Conservation Act would prevent such things, but it apparently allows for “personal pet purposes when the applicant meets certain criteria.”
And using this CITES webpage to search on Great Blue Turacos reveals that at least some West African countries have considerable yearly quotas for legally exporting them:
http://www.cites.org/eng/resources/species.html
Thank you for looking this up, Jim. I was shocked to see the bird there, thinking it must surely be illegal, but some internet poking revealed that it was legal. The trade in wild birds has become ore tightly regulated lately (bird flu scares help) but there is still a huge black/gray market. In addition to conservation problems, I think there are animal welfare issues although I don’t know enough about this particular species to comment (some wild birds seem fine in captivity, others not). The end of Julie Zickefoose’s book, The Bluebird Effect, has some wise words of experience about this.
And Blake: “A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.”