Adapted from Jim Conrad's online book
A Birding Trip through Mexico
This excerpt from "The Gulf-Coast Beach at Montepio"
in  southern coastal Veracruz state

SUDDEN UNEXPECTED

The hours pass with little sense of there ever being anything other than "now." An immature Laughing Gull drifts by just offshore and it hardly registers more than one's turning in bed during a sound sleep.

But then like a flash of lightning from over the dune-levee behind me a Crested Caracara bolts across the sky right above me and for an instant I see the moment exactly as I sketched at the right.

There is no kill, not even a certain touching of the two birds, and within seconds the caracara is back across the dune-levee and the gull is on down the beach.

I hadn't expected to see a caracara here, and, once I think about it, this is the first gull I've seen since I've been here. What an amazing, unforeseen moment!

And then, the rest of the day, it's more sweet monotony.