I love this image. The expression on the bird’s face never fails to raise my smile. It was taken in Beijing in 2008. We were wandering around the outside of the walls of the Forbidden City, surveying ramshackle neighbourhoods and their inhabitants. We’d regularly come across small areas where the neighbourhood elders would gather to play mah-jong, converse and gather their songbirds.
Each elder would bring one songbird in a cage and hang it from a tree. The idea is that it provides the birds the chance to sing together and gather together as a group. This happened daily, from early to late morning and it filled the busy neighbourhood with the sweet sound of birdsong.
This one bird stood out, seemingly ostracised. Its companions had been removed, taken back home to their master’s house. The expression on the bird’s face captured our attention straight away. It looked almost pained and startled sitting there alone in its ornate cage in the freezing temperatures. Its expression seemed almost magnified against the bright red walls of the Forbidden City, and the absence of anything else in the picture seemed to highlight the birds’ plight more so.
We could not resist taking this picture, and it still tugs on our heart strings to this day. That’s why it’s my photo of the week.