Talking about birds
A few minutes ago I arrived home after visiting one of our local Residential Aged Care homes. Our ladies’ fellowship group at church had arranged to hold one of their meetings in a small meeting room in the home. I was the guest speaker for the meeting.
I was asked to speak about birds and show some of my photographs of the birds of this area using a PowerPoint presentation. I was asked to keep the talk to about thirty minutes and this was to keep their attention. The old folk tend to drift into the Land of Noddy after that. With my considerable collection of photos and my tendency to rave on a little about my favourite hobby, restricting me to thirty minutes was a challenge. (Or perhaps the organiser knows me too well!)
Anyway, I managed to cull the presentation down to thirty photographs and I mentally gave myself one minute to talk about each photo. Mission accomplished: I only went over by about five minutes. In fact, it took longer to get all the old folk to the room in their wheel chairs and walking frames than it took to give the presentation.
Many of the folk thought the presentation was great with much praise for the photos. And I only heard heavy breathing coming from one person, despite the very warm room. It was a pleasing experience.
Below is one of the photos I showed this afternoon.
Updated Nov 2013.
Mallee Ringneck Parrot
Hi Trevor,
Glad to hear your talk went well. I gave a talk at a mens dinner recently about birds and the “lessons in life” we can learn from them – stealing most of my ideas from the Christian Author, John Stott. I did use all my own photos, though, admitting that I have far fewer to choose from. After a lifetime travelling the world speaking (and birdwatching) he has a life-list of over 2500 species. Like you, my audience was at least polite enough to say the talk was interesting – hopefully it might have challenged them a bit, too.
Hi there John,
I also used the John Stott book for inspiration; it is a wonderful book and it was great dipping into it again in recent days. I must reread it again (he says, adding it to the growing pile of books and magazines waiting to be read).