Bird Flew

You will never never see a dead crow on the side of the road. — Mark Turner

Last night Donna and I were wined and dined by Jerry and his wife (also a Donna.) We went out to a place called Catch 22, a small seafood restaurant on New Orleans Road. Jerry was feeling expansive so he insisted we have all have an a glass of wine, appetizers, entree and dessert. The pinot noir was the best I have ever had, the crab cake for a starter that was terrific and the Veal Saltimbocca was so good that if they kept bringing to the table I would have eaten it until I lost consciousness. The chocolate brownie with ice cream for dessert while good, but was actually the low point of the meal. Catch 22 is listed as a seafood restaurant only the women had a seafood entree, unless Jerry’s duck was an eider. Everyone of us raved about our meals as the best we had eaten in memory, so while I’m sure Hilton Head Island has many terrific places to eat, you definitely can’t go bad in your hunt to find your personal favorite by starting out at Catch 22.

This morning dawned cold and overcast for our drive back. There are only so many ways to get back to Aiken from HHI and I’m thinking unless we start taking dirt roads, we’ve been on all of them. Donna did manage to map out one we hadn’t done in a while, which had about a third of it on US321 (a nice bit of symmetry seeing as we were in condo A321.) Even though it was quite chilly the birds know spring is right around the corner as there were quite a bunch active along the roadside. Quite a few cardinals were spotted along with a couple of our state birds, the Carolina Wren. As usual on the these rural two-lane roads many a turkey vulture was spooked by our approach only to hop back to feeding once we were past. There was cauldron of them feasting on a deer that I bet numbered a couple dozen. The most unusual sighting was when we crested a small rise and there were several crows and a large brown and white bird around something on the left of the road. As we got within 50 yards the crows scurried off leaving behind a slower to take off bigger bird, which turned out to be, no shit, a bald eagle. It probably had a 4 1/2 – 5 foot wing span. It was the last thing we expected to see feeding along the road.