Birds

Being Turtles Crawling  

  After a false start because we had to turn around and go to Bella’s last soccer practice which Mary remembered a half hour into our trip, we made it to Triangle Pond, an acre of muddy, trash-strewn water next to what looked like a municipal bus maintenance lot in down town Naha, and the best birding I’ve seen in Okinawa. 

The birder I met on the ferry to Kumejima told me Triangle Pond was the place to see black-faced spoonbills, and he was right. Just as we walked over from the Family Mart where we parked, two flew in and landed, as did a gray heron which looks like our great blue. A third spoonbill joined them a few minutes later.

Black-faced Spoonbills  

 I identified 12 species, including Northern shovelers, coots, moorhens, black winged stilts, plovers, sandpipers, and snipes. Mary and I saw a ruddy breasted crake, a rail relative, taking a bath. We were about to leave when a Common Kingfisher, (yes, that’s its name), flew out from under the bridge, hovered, swooped down and caught a fish, then landed on a dead branch quite close to us. Grant called it a Goliath hummingbird from the way its iridescent turquoise back and brick-colored breast feathers shimmed in the sun.

This almost, but only almost, makes me want to carry a camera and huge telephoto lens so I could take great pictures. Fortunately, I’m too cheap.

Ryan couldn’t come with us, because he and his squadron are now quarantined for the rest of 14 days since they came back from the Philippines. For the first ten days, there was no quarantine order, so they went to work, restaurants, etc. Now they are confined to quarters. I’m not feeling safer from our leadership’s command of the situation. For the pilots and maintenance personnel, it’s sitting around, probably watching TV or playing video games. For Ryan, it’s telemedicine so he’s still working the whole time, just on the phone rather than going to the clinic.

Because everything not essential is shut down in Florida, our UU congregation has gone to video conferencing for all activities. Grant met with his men’s group 8:00 Thursday morning, 7:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Our covenant group had a coffee klatch to try out the new format at 9:00 AM EDT which worked really well even though it meant we were participating at 10:00 PM Okinawa time. Sunday service was a little more difficult at 11:30 PM, but I managed to stay awake, then left the meeting before hospitality, i.e., chat room, started. I think in the long run, this will be the way we conduct committee meetings, saving gas and time. Convenient for us, and better for the environment. At last something good from this terror.