Wind, Waves and Wings

     April 4, 2015 was a sunny, pretty day in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, so my wife Sue and I took a drive that afternoon to Long Level which is a floodplain along the Susquehanna River in neighboring York County.  The afternoon was windy and I was not surprised to see shoreline trees waving in it and that the river's surface was rough.  The wind was also uncomfortable with its chill and velocity, but it created a bit of a show along the river. 
     The Susquehanna runs northwest to southeast and the wind was from the northwest, which was allowed to blow strongly and unopposed down the river.  As Sue and I sat in our car in a parking lot right on the edge of the river, we could see innumerable white caps on the high waves (for a river) of its green surface.  Water birds sitting on the water, such as hundreds of ring-billed gulls, a dozen Canada geese, a half dozen mallard ducks and a few double-created cormorants, would be visible on the crests of waves, but momentarily disappear in the troughs between them, only to appear again on top of the next wave. 
     The wind blew the waves across the river which, ultimately caused large breakers for a river in the shallows close to shore.  Those breakers, in turn, crashed and splashed noisily and constantly on logs, rocks and the ground along the shoreline.  Water dripped off soaked logs and, sometimes, spray from those breakers splashed onto our car.
     But the best part of the wind over the river and along its shores was the way arious kinds of birds coped with its strength.  The ducks and geese, as usual, powered through it and landed on the water by descending into the wind for control of their downward flight. 
     The many ring-bills floated on the wind like so many kites, and gracefully banked and circled in the wind.  When the gulls came down for a landing on water or the ground, they set their wings and coasted into the wind as lightly as a feather, descending, descending without a wing beat, apparently a perfect balance between the power of gravity and that of the wind, until they set foot on water or soil.  Watching those graceful gulls descending gently into the wind was feathered poetry; a work of art created by The Master Artist.  Other species of birds are just as beautiful to watch in flight, but that day it happened that the ring-bills were evident.  Every living being is perfectly designed for what it does.               
     Readers can have the same experiences I had that sunny, windy day in April.  Just be outside with an open mind and watch for the possibilities unfold before you.