Going down our driveway one morning, we noticed a large number of birds in our front stockpond, the like of which we'd never seen before. We drove across the field to get a better look, and they all took off. They were about twenty huge birds with a wingspan of several feet and black wingtips. I managed to get a couple of blurry pictures as they circled our pond, and was able to identify them as wood storks, or wood ibises. According to the book, they were about two hundred miles from their normal stomping grounds at the coast.
Fortunately, the next day, we had another opportunity to get photos of these unusual visitors to our area when we drove past a pond in one of the neighboring cornfields and saw a group of them skimming the shallow water for breakfast. The reflections of the trees and the big birds in the calm water made for a very striking image.
