A Good Friday

It was another good Friday, this one with a capital G.  But this wasn’t an adventure; it was an outing.  No winding roads.  Setmana Santa was almost over and I was headed out to the wetlands. Because of the week-long holiday, I figured there would be more people than usual, but the storks have been nesting and I thought maybe there were babies to see. Babies don’t stay babies for long, and I didn’t want to miss anything.

I had underestimated the multitudes. The wetlands had turned into a theme park. There was one of those tourist mini-trains, and the parking lot was full. There were two men directing us to an adjacent field where we could park on the grass. I decided to ignore, as best I could, the legions (who had as much right to be there as I had) and enjoy the birds.

I found the storks and the same toing and froing as the last time. I do enjoy trying to catch them in flight. What I don’t think I found were babies. I saw storks coming back to a nest with someone in it, but those seemed to be adult birds. Storks share the nesting responsibilities, so I suppose one would always stay to sit on the eggs. Or maybe the babies had already grown kind of big ...

Baby stork or adult?

But wait.  There was something strange going on in one of the nests.  A threesome? 

A threesome?

   

Four?

Enough.  I headed over to the pond that had so many ducks the last time. This time the ducks had been joined by a group of flamingos. Maybe you already know this, but I didn’t until just now when I looked it up. There are three common terms for a group of flamingos: flamboyance, colony, and stand. Flamboyance is the most popular (and probably the most fitting), but there is no rule for using one or another, that is to say, the term you use doesn’t depend on the number of birds or their location. But for me, I would prefer to use the term flamboyance for a larger group. The pond had about two dozen and they were strewn around. That wasn’t flamboyant enough for me. So I would say that the ducks had been joined by a stand of flamingos (mostly standing on one leg, as they do).

Husband and wife duck with turtle

A stand of flamingos

On the drive back