I mentioned in a previous post that it might be virtuous to allow neighbours their privacy.
Certainly, the birds in my garden prefer it if I do not watch them feeding. They will tolerate the cats on the other side of the glass, but if I look through the kitchen window, let alone the conservatory window, there's a whirring and flapping of wings and off they fly. The brave ones, like the fat squirrel and the fattest of the pigeons, just turn their backs on me. They refuse to allow themselves to 'feel' seen.
Squirrel through a glass darkly.
It would be nice if they were less afraid of me - but I can't blame them. We humans are the super-predators.
Now, my dear friend Leanne has wildlife cameras outside the setts of badgers and dens of foxes. She leaves food for them and shares with me images of creatures galore. We saw the baby foxes playing last year and the badgers cleaning their bedding. Leanne told me they drag it all out of the nest and leave it until the bugs have gone before dragging it back in again! We have seen a stoat, rats and mice and the clever crows who have now realised there is a food source and are stealing what Leanne leaves for the foxes.
I love seeing these images. And I don't feel too prurient - after all, the camera is not in the actual den.
But documentary makers love the camera-in-the-den device. I watched a fox give birth and a woodmice give up her nest when a queen bee decided she wanted it. This did make me feel a little... invasive.
Even so, when I saw on the Wildlife Trust website that they have 'Live Cams' I started to look. Barn owls asleep. One was standing up, not sitting on her egg which was a little worrying. Ospreys either not there or plucking at their nesting material. A disgruntled Peregrine above Nottingham's busy streets. Then I went to the Bat-Cam - and a bat had decided to roost over the lens. This made me laugh out loud. But the laughter is protective. Looking at all these creatures, battling against the odds, with their beauty, innocence and complete vulnerability was, in a way, painful.
There are a couple of papers about privacy - Gay Bradshaw co-authored one - and there is something disturbingly rapacious about our need to see. Our sense that we have a 'right to sight'. If the are not hunting the elephants, well, they'd better be there for us to film and photograph! The animals in the zoo better not be able to hide from all the human prying eyes. If they're in the wild, well, who cares about them unless we can see them.
It's like they are not real, not deserving of care and compassion, unless we can see them. Out of sight is out of mind for us.
There's something so very wrong about this. Didn't it used to be that we valued that which was unrevealed? Or maybe not. Maybe revelation is all that has ever counted.
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