{"id":924,"date":"2015-08-12T19:45:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T17:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/calming-the-beast-within\/"},"modified":"2015-08-12T19:45:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T17:45:35","slug":"calming-the-beast-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/calming-the-beast-within\/","title":{"rendered":"Calming the beast within"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\">Calming &#8220;the beast&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">All photos courtesy of Dr Roger Buchanan. Roger calls his large telephoto lens &#8220;the beast&#8221;, which strikes me as a good leading line to show some of his photos taken during the last Ornitholiday&#8217;s Southern Catalonia Tour which we happily spent together. Along with his long-suffering wife, Jane, aka &#8220;the boss&#8221;. But that&#8217;s quite another subject&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-bee-eater.jpg\" alt=\"Bee-eater, Merops apiaster, on a birding tour in Spain\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">A beautiful Bee-eater. <em>What is man without the beasts? For if all the beasts were gone man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.<\/em> <strong>Chief Seattle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-bee-eaters-lucky-day.jpg\" style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.3em\" alt=\"Bee-eater\u2019s lucky day, on a birding tour in Spain\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The Bee-eater&#8217;s lucky day. The beast appears to be calmed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-blue-spot-hairstreak.jpg\" style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.3em\" alt=\"Blue-spot Hairstreak, on a birding tour in Spain\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Blue-spot Hairstreak. <em>Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.<\/em><strong> Aristotle<\/strong>. Maybe not &#8220;delighted&#8221; and maybe not real &#8220;solitude&#8221; but it&#8217;s surely a pleasing thing to get away from the crowds and to contemplate some of nature&#8217;s beauties, don&#8217;t you think?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-gcgrebe.jpg\" style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.3em\" alt=\"Great Crested Grebe, on a birding tour in Spain\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">A Great Crested Grebe on nest. <em>Every man has a wild beast within him<\/em>. <strong>Frederick the Great.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\u00a0<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-glossy-ibis.jpg\" alt=\"Glossy Ibis, on a birding tour in Spain\" style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.3em\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">A Glossy Ibis in the Ebro Delta. <em>I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one&#8217;s nature.<\/em> <strong>Anthony Hopkins.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/roger-morocco-orange-tip.jpg\" alt=\"Moroccan Orange Tip, on a birding tour in Spain\" style=\"font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.3em\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Moroccan Orange Tip. <em>The beast, once calmed, can be harnessed as a force for good<\/em>. <strong>Steve West.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Calming &#8220;the beast&#8221; All photos courtesy of Dr Roger Buchanan. Roger calls his large telephoto lens &#8220;the beast&#8221;, which strikes me as a good leading line to show some of his photos taken during the last Ornitholiday&#8217;s Southern Catalonia Tour which we happily spent together. Along with his long-suffering wife, Jane, aka &#8220;the boss&#8221;. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-and-nature-photos","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-eU","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}