Last night, standing by the bay, I was remembering that a year or so ago I was standing there thinking about the fact that in Love in the Ruins Thomas More mentions seeing and hearing a kingfisher, and that it was strange that I never had, because this is the same sort of place as the part of Louisiana where More lived. And soon after that I saw one, and heard its distinctive chattering cry. Last night I was thinking that I hadn’t seen one for some time. And then this morning I saw (and heard) one. An odd coincidence. The kingfisher is said to be a brilliantly colored bird, but either the ones I’ve seen are relatively drab or the colors are being muted by my seeing the bird in silhouette against a bright sky.
Also last night, I saw the moon setting over the water, very much as described in this blog post, only without the candle effect.
Twice in the past week or so, most recently this morning, I’ve seen what I believe is an osprey. At any rate it’s a large predatory bird that landed in a dead tree and then appeared to be hunting over the water. At first it was coming straight toward me and I thought it was a pelican, just because of the size, but when it turned I could see that it wasn’t.
Also this morning I saw a fairly large mullet jumping. The sun was shining and the mullet flashed silver when it came out of the water. I was glad to see this, because the bay has been over-fished and I don’t see nearly as many mullet as I did ten or fifteen years ago.
It was not very recently that I saw this pelican; it was at least a year ago. I keep trying to take pictures of pelicans, gulls, etc., but my camera doesn’t have a long enough lens to get them close and in focus.
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a comment