by Peter Tkacik
Hello neighbors:
I recently attended The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival
(www.spacecoastbirding.com) and among other activities, I went flat water
kayaking. This trip was in some slow moving Mangrove swamps at the south
end of Merritt Island which is where NASA has Cape Canaveral and has the
whole island off limits to development in case of a wayward rocket.
In this field trip, I met a short muscular middle aged guide named Bill
with his trailer load of kayaks (www.advkayak.com) and he asked me about my
physical shape and then assigned me a kayak that seemed wonderfully easy to
guide and paddle. An older short lady answered a few questions and he
suggested she ride in a canoe with him. Their ride was fun to see as he
put comfy lawn chairs into the canoe and she sat on a cushion up front. He
wore a sort of 'Lawrence of Arabia' cap and 'stood' in the back of the
canoe poling her along in the shallow water. The lady drank from a cooler
at her feet.
At one point, I was paddling along a stream past Warblers and Kingfishers
and looked up to see Black and Turkey Vultures circling. I love to watch
these giant birds as they soar so effortlessly. Sprinkled amongst them
were two adult Bald Eagles and then some Wood Storks joined in and now
there were about fifty birds with five to seven foot wingspans and all of
them backlit a different pattern of black and white.
In the warm Florida air with the clear cerulean sky, it would have made a
great photograph (had I been one of those skilled National Geographic
photographers). Fortunately, I didn't bother to carry a camera and instead
just laid back and enjoyed the great view. Back at the boat landing I
mentioned the spectacle over our heads and several fellow birders cried out
that they hadn't life listed storks yet and couldn't believe they were
right there waiting for us to look up.
So the moral of the story is that to see the world around you, sometimes
you just need to keep your eyes open.
