Up on the Grand Canyon National Park, North Rim, out at greenlake, I had earlier stumbled upon the water source and started both myself and the beautiful velvetted buck that was drinking...allowing me to watch its pure grace as it lept away showing me its beautiful profile the whole time...Of course I was not prepared. I left and came back the next day only to find this male American Robin waiting for me and nothing else.

I considered the moment and what I would do next. The lighting on the Robin was not ideal, but for my trouble he would become my consolation prize. As I started to shoot, it jumped off the log it was perched on and into the messy leafy shallow watered edge. He shook and plunged, plunged and shook, showing me his back the whole time as if "Can't a guy have a moment?". I took my queue and departed, thinking about what lesson I could draw upon this experience.

The lesson I settled for is that I need to clean up my act if I'm gonna get the all-american shots. Thank you American Robin.

The American robin (Turdus migratorius) is a migratory songbird of the true thrush genus and Turdidae, the wider thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, though the two species are not closely related, with the European robin belonging to the Old World flycatcher family. The American robin is widely distributed throughout North America, wintering from southern Canada to central Mexico and along the Pacific Coast. It is the state bird of Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The only bird more abundant across all these lands is the red-winged blackbird.