Birds of a Feather Flock Together

As I was walking around campus one day, I caught this photo of a group of ducks all glancing in the same direction and edited it on computer to bring out a brighter contrast. As anyone who has walked the University's campus even once can attest, these ducks are everywhere to be seen always waddling together on the pathways and down by the lake.

This particular photograph to me represents the Miami in the way that the exiles and immigrants who came to live here from other countries tend to stick together and hold a strong sense of community. Take for example the Cuban community: Little Havana is filled with generations of Cubans that hold the same ideals and traditions as well as the dream that they can one day return to a free Cuba. Though they literally live in the city of Miami, they clump together and don't associate themselves with the locals.

Much in the same way, although the ducks do come in contact with other birds across campus, they still flock together as a pack when they do and share similar physical characteristics as Cubans do. This particular shot struck me, perhaps in the way that Barthes describes punctum because it is not simply a picture of three ducks but strikes me that all three birds share a similar stature and are staring in the same direction; this reinforces the sense of community and a shared ideology, almost as if they are after the same thing.