Kestrel, Point Reyes National Seashore

A male kestrel perches on a metal fence post.

I love to photograph kestrels, especially the males because of that additional gray/blue color.  I would have preferred a wooden fence post here, or better yet, a nice tree branch.  The post reminds me of a photo contest rule that the camera clubs in the SF Bay Area followed when I was a member of one of the clubs.  I think it was referred to as the Hand-of-Man Rule.  As I recall, if you entered a photo in the nature/wildlife category, there couldn’t be anything in the photo that was man-made.   Obviously, this photo wouldn’t qualify, and rightly so.   I might be more sympathetic if the metal post were a wooden one, especially if the post were very old and weathered, but rules are rules and it’s not easy to make exceptions.  They did have an exception though, which I thought made the whole rule kind of stupid.  As I recall, the exception allowed for photos of wildlife that were collared or tagged in some way.   I could never figure out the justification for that one.  My only thought was that when they wrote the rule there was someone involved in the rule-writing who had a photo of a tagged or collared animal that he/she really wanted to enter in a contest in the wildlife category.  As I write this I wonder if some photos I took recently of a coyote in a field planted with silage for later mowing and feeding to livestock would be prohibited by the hand-of-man rule.  Writing clear rules (or laws) is not easy.