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No pages today, in fact I never opened up my lap top. Jon and I have spent the day watching the ocean spill across the sand. We’ve purchased groceries, a Solstice present for Trinity. It was just so her we couldn’t pass it up. We have joined a health club so that we can exercise while we’re here. I brought my binoculars and bird book this time so we could look at the passing fauna up close, but some of the fauna came to us. This afternoon we were sipping tea on the balcony and an American Kestrel flew up to land on the railing. It was almost landed when it saw us, back-pedaled, flaring its tail wide so I got an amazing look at the pale rufous (red) color and the striping. It flew to a neighboring balcony that didn’t have people on it. It sat on the railing for a long time grooming its feathers and watching the ground for prey. I don’t know what it eats this close to the sea, but it was alert for movement. A second Kestrel flew up to the other and then rose up suddenly, and was just gone with a flick of wings and a flare of tail. They were so maneuverable. The sea gulls were graceful but nothing we saw today matched the speed and dexterity of the littlest falcon native to North America. Both the Kestrels were females. The males are a little more colorful and less stripy among other things. A Kestrel was the first bird we saw when we landed. It was hovering above the grassy verge looking for food. They are one of the few birds that can and routinely do hover in mid-air. It gives them a greater sense of timing, because they can hover and wait for their moment before they strike. Did you know that falcons don’t kill with their talons, but with the speed and strength of a blow. Think of it as them making a fist and hitting something so hard they stun it, and sometimes kill it outright from the first blow. Though admittedly that’s more likely from a Peregrine or a Gyrfalcon, something bigger than a Kestrel. We had one near our house when I was growing up that ate grasshoppers as its main prey animal. I never saw it with anything else. When I say they’re small, I mean the size of a blue-jay. Small and elegant, maneuverable, and one of the most adaptable birds of prey that we have. Not bad for a bird smaller than my forearm.

We saw platoons of brown pelicans going back and forth all afternoon. Sea gulls galore and some terns, I’m still struggling to learn to tell them all apart. It’s like sparrows so similar that differentiating is difficult. I’ll study up and get better at identifying them. Gulls are very graceful and somehow funny at the same time like aerobatic pigeons. We saw two osprey winging over the water, and one of them greeted us as we landed with a fish in its talons. It’s been a very bird-of-prey-rich-trip.

The Kestrel being so close was my favorite bird interaction of the day, but my next favorite were the Black Skimmers. I didn’t know what they were when we saw them in a flock so low over the water that I thought they meant to land on it, but they stayed just above the waves and dipped their lower bills in the water skimming for food. They are a deep velvet black above and snowhite below so they look very formal as if they’re ready for some black tie event. Formal and moving in this graceful line of birds, dipping into the water and winging away as the sun began to set.

I’ve been a birder since college and this trip is reminding me how much I enjoy it. I need to go on more birding vacations. So no pages for the day but I feel refreshed and just rested. There are so many reasons that I got a degree in biology and almost went on to be a wildlife biologist instead of a writer. I’m happy that I went the writing route, but this trip has reminded me that just because I’m not a biologist as a job doesn’t mean I can’t still do it as a hobby.