With almost all of our waking hours spent outdoors we have been in the company of a tremendous number of birds over the last eighteen months, some ubiquitous, others very location specific.
On passages brown boobies sometimes hitch a ride, their ridiculous faces and ungainly manner on deck totally belying the grace of their muscular flight over the wave tops. Soaring high, high or tumbling, squabbling over morsels, the frigate birds fly on and on, some say foretelling the weather for "when the Man O'War flies low the wind gonna blow." Terns, perched three to a pile top squinting to windward under black caps pulled down low. In the jungle coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica seabirds pale to the brash, boastful colors of the Toucans' preposterous bill and the Scarlet Macaws' red regal train.



In mangrove and in marsh Great Herons, Fishing Long Legs to the Native Americans, tiptoe through the shallows or fly lazily through the fading evening light to a favorite roost. The shimmering orange pink of the distant and shy flamingos of Long Cay.
The Chesapeake is on the wildfowl flyway, but our rhythms are not in sync. The geese and duck have gone north leaving only a few vagrants. If we overstay into the winter we can expect to hear the wild call of the southern bound geese, and it will be hard not to heed and follow.
Along the ICW osprey, occasional sightings along most coastlines, are prolific, with pairs building their shambolic nests on almost every navigation aid and screaming their high pitched wails as they pluck fish with seeming ease from between anchored yachts. In South Carolina were many pairs of wild eyed Bald Eagles, once almost extinct, but brought back under protection from the Endangered Species Act. In a time of extreme doubt in the ability of government to make a difference this is a small but heart warming reminder that sometimes it does.



But if you live on the sea the bird you most come to know and love is the pelican. Ridiculous when resting on water, more so on land, he looks embarrassed by the sheer size of beak, but watch him fly for fish, corkscrewing, always left handed, into a ballistic dive and ridiculous becomes athletic and embarrassed becomes lethal. For us they provide countless hours of entertainment, for the small boat fishermen of Central America they are their constant companions, the birds showing the way to productive fishing grounds and then sharing in the catch as is it hauled and cleaned. These men often spend more time with the pelicans than they do with their families.