A young roseate spoonbill greeted us as we turned onto Biolab Road. What an alluring name for a road!
I like how he's using his tail as a brake, and he's clinging for all he's worth to the snag. Vulture feet are not strong in the clutching department, which is why they have to carry prey in their beaks.
Black vultures are a Florida fixture, and they call southwest Ohio their year-round home, but they're still pretty unusual to see in southeast Ohio, where we live. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before they completely colonize my area. We have roadkill aplenty. You could live on roadkill around here, if you wanted to. Which I do not.
Bill had told me that Biolab Road was a must-see, and we were not disappointed. Phoebe said it led to the beach, and that seemed like a meet adventure for a mom and two cubs...drive down the road and wind up on Cape Canaveral's beach. We drove and drove, rolling slowly along, taking in the incredible wildlife along the way.
The kids loved the reddish egret, especially when I told them that birders call it the "drunken clown" for the way it staggers about in the shallows, following the lightning-fast movement of schools of fish which only it can see.
It throws out its wings for balance, making a spectacle of itself. To someone who doesn't know that it's fishing, it looks crazy, possessed, drunk.
And then it plunges its rapier bill straight down into the water to stab at little fishies.
The spoonbills are more filter feeders, running that great appendage through the silt and snapping closed on whatever lives within.
They swing their great heads side to side, slowly sweeping through the shallows.
They make pass after pass in an unconsciously lovely ballet.
Earlier in the day, we'd lucked upon a preening group of spoonbills along Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island NWR. I quickly deployed the Leica scope and camera to digiscope their sickly green heads, ruby eyes and glorious crimson shoulders.
Could there be a much more convincing link between the dinosaurs and today's birds?
It was not much of a stretch to imagine duck-billed dinosaurs snapping to attention at the approach of a pack of Deinonychus, especially for Liam.
So long did we watch and admire the wading birds and snoozing gators that it finally became clear that we would never reach the beach before dark
and we decided that that was fine with us, because what could be better than this pastel sunset, with us all breathing the salt air, appreciating the heartbreakingly beautiful color. Color has been gone from our lives for months and months. We decided that all our color had drained down into Florida. We're very anxious to get it back, as rainy day follows rainy day and the crocuses struggle to bloom.
Phoebe snapped me in pursuit of egrets
and I snapped her in pursuit of sunsets
and it was all dreamily beautiful. We hated to see that sun sink, but it was kind enough to go behind some cutout palm trees, delighting Liam who thought it was time for the pterodactyl to swoop through, cackling, at any moment.
A snowy egret punched a white hole in the inky marsh as we said goodbye to another Florida day.
All landscape and car interior photos taken with my Canon G-12, chunky little point and shoot genius box.
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