Frigate birds
Those large black birds, with long, sharp and extended wings, showing a whitish or intense red colored swollen throat, are the Frigate Birds, the "always there" black shore birds that sail the high blue sky for hours every day. To see them sailing, taking advantage of warm rising currents, showing of their natural abilities is a spectacle. Sometimes they are static, rigid, unmoving, simply sunbathing with extended wings, imitating paper kites, head pointing windward, staying still for hours in formation. These six feet wingspan marine birds use their curved bill tips, shaped as hooks, to secure their catch. They make serene low passes near the waves surface, allowing them to elegantly pinch the fish food with their hook shaped beak tips, as if they were toothed tweezers. Their head and bill movement is graceful and secure, bringing a small fish back every time they try. One of the places where they nest is located in Morrocoy National Park. These birds reproduce toward December and January within a red mangrove island shaped like a donut. There, the red throated males with their guts inflated to the maximum, court the females. The couples build the nests and tend the young, those clumsy and ill feathered bird prospects that with time will elegantly dot the skies with their silhouettes, like high flags of the sea. |
