Cheating or Not Cheating?

Well, yesterday, when working with some of the woodpecker images I shot, and which are in my previous post, I suddenly realized something. Looking at the images close I see that the hole in the wood seems to have this light amber golden what looks to be something slightly gooey and that is what the birds had on their beaks in several of my shots. Click! (and not a camera shutter - my brain) omg, is that peanut butter? All of a sudden the photos I managed to get lacked some of the thrill, a bit of the lustre, lol! Ok, either some avid bird photographer was putting peanut butter in the hole so they could get a shot of the birds real close or someone came along who maybe always does, and provided the birds with a needed source of food in what has proven to be a pretty fierce winter.

I don't know, discovering this, having this visual explanation as to why the sudden influx of woodpeckers which seemed to us to be this amazing experience, kinda scaled down the thrill a few notches when I realized "oh, it was the bloody peanut butter" lol! It made my images seem not so lucky, not so amazing and thrilling and certainly way less natural, upon learning Why the birds came so close, why we got so lucky and had so many of them to see and get a chance to photograph.

But, on the same token, that peanut butter allowed us to get to see these amazing creatures, especially the boy Downey Woodpecker, closer than I have ever seen before, left us feeling elated and amazed, made our day, made us feel grateful, and allowed me to see the detail of these wonderful little creatures even better once we got home and looked at my shots (since really, my long distance eyesight has never been good never mind great). It also meant that they are able to survive and hopefully flourish in the aftermath of that really hard which was lived through both by people and animals.