Snowy egrets, seals and kites

I love my job.

I work with teenage boys that live in a residential treatment facility.

They are kids stuck in the child welfare system for a variety of reasons.

I wish I could blog about them because each one touches my life in ways that are incredible. For confidentiality reasons, I can't.

Yesterday I took them on a trip to a local state park beach.

Rumors of seals laying on the rocks off the shores combined with them sharing my new addiction to birding drew us out.

We saw the seals and couldn't believe it! Laying on rocks right here in our state!

We also identified some birds in our amaturish ways....(we asked people who looked like they knew what they were talking about).

We saw an Osprey nesting, snowy egrets, redwinged blackbirds and plenty of seagulls.

The boys swear (and I'll go into the fantasy with them) that they saw eagles soaring overhead and perigine falcons....we even think we may have seen a golden eagle or two. As we walked over the salty bogs to the platform to view the seals, we saw baby great white sharks swimming in the 2 inch high water. IT was an amazing day!

The nicest thing of all happened when we were flying a kite. We had our state issue plastic cheap kite that we were amazingly successful at launching into the air.

A man flying a beautiful kite, rainbowed with tails, watched us fly our kite all afternoon.

Perhaps it was the state van, or the range of ethnicities of our teen boys, or simply the love for flying this pathetic kite that one of my boys had......but this man was touched and gave my boy his kite.

It felt like a visit from an angel. Of course, I couldn't tell him where my boys were from or why that was such a wonderful gift....

but I think he could tell that.

He left the kite with us and we had a great time flying it.

You should have seen the incredible smile on the boy flying it as he waved thanks to the man and his family.