Spoonbills in the rain

A family of white Spoonbills waded in the shallows of Skeleton creek as I walked the dog yesterday. The sleeting rain and low skies that cast the wind and salt swept landscape in a dusky grey palette, set their white plumage in a shock of  brilliant contrast that delighted the eye and shook the mind from its wrestless winter musings. Silently, they glided their precisely evolved, strange bills through the current coming in from the ocean  along the  salt encrusted bank.

As my eyes blinked and my body hunched against the stinging rain, and the dog strained against his leash and shook the the water from his coat, one dipped in the air above the creek, appearing suddenly, as an angel or a metaphor, then ascended again over the footbridge, and silently glided down to join the others.