Wings

I couldn’t help but notice the birds while we were in the National Park of Sawgrass and Alligator.  In one lagoon, pelicans were diving for food, hitting the water with great slaps of energy.  Some of the birds, like the great blue heron, were familiar to me, because we have them up on the river, but many of the birds were ones I’d never seen before.  The coolest was the anhinga, a bird that has evolved to swim.  I watched an anhinga swim underwater, its wings all folded up, wiggling its body like a small child would and then spearing a fish with her beak.  Then she came to the surface to toss the fish in the air and gulp it down.  When she was done fishing, she flew to a fence post to spread her wings to dry.  All through the park, we’d see these birds, in trees or on fences, holding their wet wings up to the sun.