Bluebird Set A $128.00	Bluebird Set B $57.00	Bluebird Set C $21.00
Bluebird Set D $21.00	Bluebird Set E $90.00	Bluebird Set F $31.00
Bluebird Set G $45.00	Bluebird Set H $73.00	Bluebird Set I $100.00
Bluebird Set J $170.50	Bluebird Set K $78.00	Bluebird Set L $60.00
Bluebird Set M $47.00	Bluebird Set N $28.00	Bluebird Set O $18.00
Bluebird Set P $64.00	Bluebird Set Q $38.00	Bluebird Set R $24.50
Bluebird Set S $137.00	Bluebird Set T $66.00	Bluebird Set U $154.00
Bluebird Set V $117.00	Bluebird Set W $27.00	Bluebird Set X $19.95
Bluebird Set Y $28.50	Bluebird Set Z $120.00	Bluebird Set ABC $98.00

More photos & Products from Michael L. Smith

Mad Bluebird Product Sets Click Here

Mad Bluebird Puzzle	Mad Bluebird Stained Glass Sun Catcher	The Mad Bluebird Coasters	The Mad Bluebird Photo
The Mad Bluebird Pillow	The Mad Bluebird Mugs	The Mad Bluebird Flag	Mad Bluebird Thermos Mug
Is Dinner Ready Yet	The Mad Bluebirds Mate	The Mad Bluebirds Grandson 24 Generations Later  And You Thought My Grandfather Was Mad	Yes, She Ate The Last Mealworm
The Mad Bluebird Vase	Morning Landing by Michael L. Smith	Ducks In Wood by Michael L. Smith	Morning Dove With Young
Red Shouldered Hawk	The Mad Bluebird Plate	Evening Wings	Birds Of A Feather
Great Blue Heron Portrait	Family Portrait	Spring Chill	Snow Storm
Mad Bluebirds Brats	Bluebird Chorus	Move Over	Country Bluebird
	Snowy Egret by Michael L. Smith	Least Terns by Michael L. Smith

Story Of The Mad Bluebird
By Lisa Pollak/The Baltimore Sun

    Picture of a bluebird, that's all he was after. Not money and fame, not admirers and accolades, not the chance to quit his day job and take pictures full-time. Photographing birds was his passion; it always would be. One good shot out of 100 was worth it.   And so it was that on a cold February day in 1979, Michael L. Smith set up a tripod in his back yard, pointed his camera toward a fence post and waited.   And waited.   And waited.

    He wasn't trying to change his life. He wasn't trying to buy the house of his dreams. He wasn't trying to become Michael Smith, the guy who took that bluebird photo.   He was just trying to take a photo of a bluebird.   And here came his chance. A male Eastern bluebird flew into the back yard and landed on the fence post. It hunkered down. It fluffed up its feathers. It fixed its black beady eyes on the long lens of the camera.   Sixty feet away, Smith couldn't see any of this. He sat in his house, holding a remote camera trigger, watching the bluebird through a glass door.  All he could see was that the bird was facing the camera.   Click.   The bird flew away. The man went on with his life. Neither, it seems safe to say, had any idea what they'd done.   More than 20 years later, Smith still can't entirely believe it.   If you owed your fortune to a bird, you might not either.

    As it turned out, that was no ordinary bluebird. It was a grumpy bluebird. A ticked-off, glowering, down-in-the-beak bluebird. Or so it appeared to humans, and that's what mattered, because at last count humans have bought more than 102,000 signed prints of "The Mad Bluebird" -- a phenomenal number by most photographers' standards.     In other words, a man who has spent his life taking intimate portraits of birds -- a photographer who has slept in duck blinds, spent 13 years of summer weekends documenting the habits of a single osprey and crawled through his yard with a blanket over his head to avoid disturbing his subjects -- achieved his greatest success with a photo he didn't especially like the first time he saw it and still doesn't list among his very best.
   

    "It has put me in a whole new world financially," says Smith, "I was an electrician for 32 years, and I made good money, but nothing like this."   When he says it, he doesn't sound like he's gloating. He sounds proud, grateful and still plenty stunned. When Smith moved into his new home in fall 1998, a copy of "The Mad Bluebird" was the first possession over the threshold; today, a giant print above the kitchen table reminds him every day who he has to thank. He feels indebted to the bird not just for his home, but also for his girlfriend, Marci Krishnamoorthy, whom he met while delivering prints to the nature store where she worked.   Despite the volume of prints sold, Smith still signs each one by hand -- he bought a signature machine, but it felt too impersonal.
   
    There you have it. But what difference does it make? That once-anonymous bluebird -- who bird sources say surely died years ago -- has become "The Mad Bluebird." He has attained a level of fame that few humans can hope for.

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