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I love birds! My love for bird photography started with photographing birds in my backyard for identification purposes. This love increased dramatically when I was given a nice camera for my 15th birthday. I was fascinated with the challenge of digitally capturing God’s beautiful creation, and I started learning as much as I could about photography. I didn’t realize at the time that birds are one of the most difficult subjects to photograph. On a chilly April morning, I was at Barr Lake State Park near Denver, Colorado photographing birds. My time at the lake was rewarded with capturing good images of Bald Eagles, Canada Geese, a Ring-necked Pheasant, House Finches, woodpeckers and several types of ducks. I had been outside for about 4 hours and was ready to head home. As I was walking to the car, I heard some killdeer in a field. I had been wanting some good killdeer photos, so I decided to stay a little longer. I slowly crept into the muddy field trying not to get muddy and being extremely careful not to scare the birds. There were 5 of them and it looked like they were getting ready for nesting season. I got down to the birds’ eye level and started photographing them. They didn’t seem to notice that I was in the field and sometimes came uncharacteristically close to me. I noticed that the birds were fighting with each other, so I put my camera onto a burst shooting mode and a faster shutter speed to try to freeze the action. The fight continued for a while, but the most surprising moment was when all 5 killdeer lined up perfectly and looked at me. The moment only lasted half a second before the birds were back fighting. I could not believe what had just happened and I quickly searched through all the photos I had taken to see if I had been able to capture the moment. I was absolutely thrilled when I saw this photo! I doubt I will ever capture such a perfect moment again!