By Robert M. Ungerer
Every day nature provides us with beautiful sights of landscapes, animals and even human behavior.
Several weeks ago, I received a picture of a painted bunting as part of a request to renew my National Audubon Society membership.
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This beautiful southern bird which I observed three weeks ago on Jekyll Island, Georgia has a red breast, green back and blue head; it is quite striking.
Man is often challenged to declare which bird is the most beautiful in the world. Many people have given this honor to the resplendent quetzal of Costa Rica. The monetary unit of Costa Rica, the quetzal, is named after this truly beautiful dazzling green bird with a red belly and one foot long tail.
One participant in the true story, "The Big Year," a 2011 movie about competition among three bird watchers to see the most North American birds in one year (755), feels the nondescript brown and white golden plover is his most loved and beautiful bird because it flies 10,000 miles round trip during migration each year.
I personally feel a bird I saw in Tanzania and Israel, the lilac-breasted roller, a robin sized bird with lavender breast and sky blue head and back is very beautiful.
So who cares which the most beautiful bird is? I think each creature has beauty that we need to discover.
As is universally known, we all see beauty differently, so the famous anonymous quote, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," is true.
The dictionary defines beauty as "a quality that is present in a thing or person giving intense aesthetic pleasure or deep satisfaction to the senses or mind."
Finding beauty and realizing the personal benefits of deep pleasure can be a challenge even though it is all around us. Beauty requires searching, seeking and discovery, so it takes patience and time to see or feel it.
Just this week a friend shared with me a photograph of a beautiful scene he discovered while golfing. He had taken time to look down the next fairway, beyond the bunkers to the rolling green hills of Gerry and Falconer in the background, saving the memory on his cellphone camera.
I can be satisfied if friends and I see or hear 80 species of birds on a spring day, but the real thrill and deep satisfaction comes from watching and listening to migrating tundra swans overhead in the fall. I personally find spider webs seen this spring on my porch, sun reflecting off dew drops clinging to the web, especially beautiful.
Several years ago I witnessed what to me was a beautiful moment. A young man dressed in a manner suggesting he visited shopping malls infrequently, was short money to pay the full price for his ice cream cone, but the teenage salesgirl said, "It's OK, here is your ice cream."
A quote I heard recently from the audio book by James Patterson, "Sundays at Tiffany's," captured my feelings observing the ice cream salesgirl forgiving a debt of the young man buying ice cream; "Why is it something so beautiful makes me cry?"
I used to wonder why people sat on their porches all evening while I was doing things, and my porch chair sat empty. Now I admire the porch sitter and desire to be one. To see beauty takes time and patience. Beauty will emerge for all of us to see and feel if we just take time.
Porch sitters I think have a secret; they wallow in pleasure from the beauty they experience. While porch sitting is fine, others may venture to city or state parks, the Audubon Sanctuary, or walks along country roads to observe common flowers, trees, insects, landscapes or just look at clouds.
The Chinese philosopher Confucius is noted to have said, "Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it." I personally need to take more time to appreciate nature around me. I believe even the blind man can "see" beauty by feeling, smelling and hearing the natural world.