Born Brilliant
My husband and I took my mom out to Browns Farm Rd in Belle Glade to explore this birding hotspot. The first time Spencer and I went, the fields were flooded and we were able to count 89 common nighthawk up on the powerlines staying dry. The rumors of a ruff in the area were spreading rapidly and we were hoping to see it. (Did we see it? I don’t know, maybe? Those guys are so hard to ID especially when not in mating colors. After driving myself crazy looking at hundreds of far away photos and comparing my photos to what I’ve seen people post, I pulled a ‘Shift+All’ and deleted those bad boys forgetting about the word ruff altogether.) We set the expectations a little too high, until we came across a field full of wood stork, great egret, and many other Florida birds. We tried to count but were overwhelmed at how many hundreds of birds were in one place. They seemed to congregate along the canals or near puddles of water the most searching for a bite to eat. As we stood alongside one field in particular we could feel the winds of their wings as a group of stork got spooked and circled above us before landing ten feet away from their original positions. Knowing that we were looking at a bunch of birds we had already seen for the year allowed us to stop squinting and searching and just take in the sheer magnitude of this congregation.
Before we hopped back into the car, we tried one last time to do a quick count when a roseate spoonbill took flight right down the center of the canal in front of us. I was originally frustrated when looking at the photos from this day (because of the ruff…duh) but then I saw this photo. Looking at it, to me, this picture truly exemplifies the sentiment ‘Why fit in when you were born to stand out?’
