February 25, 2010

Wings

Evening light


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.


Drying wings

9 comments:

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

WOW! Gorgeous photos! Wonderful.

I;'m working on a fellowship application which is due tomorrow, so I haven't been blogging much or visiting blogs, but I have to get today because it's the day they are announcing who goes on to the next round int he Amazon PEnguin contest, to which I submitted a manuscript--were you in Florida? I'm out of the loop--I apologize.

jo(e) said...

Mary: Yeah, I was in Florida (and had a chance to explore the Everglades), but just for the weekend. I'm already back home, where we are in the midst of a big snowstorm.

How are you? I wish we had a get-together in our future.

Ianqui said...

We had a great time in the Everglades a few years ago. In fact, it was one of my inspirations for starting Project 365 that year. Did you go to Big Cypress too? In some ways, the concentration of birds there was even more impressive.

jo(e) said...

Ianqui: We had so little time that we didn't get very far into Big Cypress before we ran out of daylight. That's the one problem with going to Florida in February -- the days are still pretty short. I'd like to return to explore that area some more.

Anonymous said...

Like cormorants!

Unknown said...

Wow, what incredible captures. So cool.

Digger said...

Welcome home to the snow! (They promised us snow down this way; all we have is a slushfest... gross). These pix are great, thank you!

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

The bottom one reminds me of pics of feathered dinosarus.

concretegodmother said...

mmm. the quality of the light is purpled and striking. lovely.