Vacation Days @ Restoration Park

I was lucky enough to make 4 vacation days stretch into a week and a half off of work by attaching those days between Christmas & New Year's holidays and it has been a welcome relief just to stay home and grub around the house and yard (that is, after celebrating each holiday and then putting away all the decorations for said holidays - ha!) But that was the beauty of this stretched out vacation - sufficient time to do EVERYTHING with leisure time to spare. Yay!
And one of the things I had the leisure time to do was, on the spur of the moment, turn into the parking lot of the wetlands walking park that I am always saying I want to explore but just never have the time to do! And it turned out to be a delight! While sitting out on one of the observation pavillions that stretch out into the wetlands, I saw a white crane-like bird poking around the shoreline and then . . . wow! What's that?! A black crane sitting in a tree!!! A black crane?!! Now this is something new! So I studied the bird as he sat there stretching out his long snake-like neck and spreading his wings. And I got lucky enough to see him fly across to another tree and lo and behold, there were patches of white on the back of his wings!!! Now I knew I had enough information to go back home and look through my field guide and see who this guy was! Of course, a few hours later, I did just that and now I know that I had a first sighting of an Anhinga!!! What a cool bird!

I've already gone back once since that day,with guide and camera in hand, and will continue as many times as I can find the opportunity as this park is such a nice place to safely view all kinds of water birds, not to mention other woodlands birds.

A Happy New Year find for sure!!!