These are hilarious birds! This is female anhinga, from spring of 2006. Ok, if you have never seen one of these birds before, you have to know that what it is doing is absolutely normal and not at all weird (for her any way) See, anhinga's feathers are porous, so when they swim in the water to catch their fish, their bodies actually sit below the water, with just their heads and necks poking up above the water. In addition to that, Anhingas don't produce oils to coat their feathers with like other waterbirds do. This all adds up to these birds having to sit with their wings extended to dry off before they can fly! This little sheila wasn't too happy with me, which is understandable considering that she was more or less completely defenseless at this point. See how her "chin" is pouched out like that? She was also bobbing her head up and down when I captured this. These are both defense mechanisms that Anhingas have. If all else fails, they run, either at you or away from you, always with their wings outstretched. Oh! And you can tell that this is a female because she has a brown head and neck, offset from her much darker black wings and back. Males are completely black, and sometimes appear irridescent!

My brother thinks these birds look like squirrels. I think he is on crack. He calls them Squirrely Birds.