Birds,  Lens-Artists,  Nature and wildlife,  Themed galleries

Gallery: wings of many kinds

November 30, 2025 / 52 Comments

Wings are of many kinds. Butterfly’s wings, vulture’s wings, eagle-wings, spread wings of white swans, dragonfly’s serene wings, wings of albatross, lovely wings of hummingbirds, tiny wings of a fly or a bumble-bee-wings; and when they fly, they fly their best according to their ability of flying. We should not underestimate the size of those heavenly wings.

Munia Khan, author and poet

If you could choose a superpower, what would you opt for? Many of us, I think, would choose the ability to fly. Haven’t you sometimes watched a bird ride the thermals and wish that you could do the same? Or looked down at the earth from a plane and wish to be able to enjoy such views all the time? And how much better to fly above busy city streets than to fight your way through crowds!

For Beth’s Lens Artists challenge theme of Wings, I’ve decided to focus on those creatures that do have that superpower: birds, butterflies, bees and more. Seeing these creatures always gives us a lift, and in the dark days of the Northern Hemisphere winter even more so.

My feature photo was taken at the bird cliffs in Alkefjellet. I could definitely have filled a whole post with birds from that and other Svalbard locations, but you have seen those images far too recently for me to want to duplicate more than a couple!

Click on any photo in each of the galleries to open a captioned slideshow

Birds

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings

William Blake

Bees

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks

J. R. R. Tolkien

Butterflies

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Paul McCartney

Other winged creatures

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings

Gustave Flaubert

52 Comments

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