They'll Suck us Dry!

While on Puerto Rico Landon my son and I decided to visit a State Park in a dry forest area.  Dry forests are unique in a lot of ways, and being on the leeward side of an incredibly lush island they seemed somehow oddly out-of-place.  We got there with an hour to closing time, and the kind man in the shack showed us an hour's worth of trails to walk.  Landon was eager to see whatever he could see, I was eager to add some birds to my life list.  So off we went--

Right into the teeth of the biggest, baddest swarm of mosquitoes you could ever imagine.  They hounded us.  No piece of exposed skin was safe from their onslought.  At first Landon was rather pleased to see me battling more of them than he.  Yes, perhaps I've gotten a bit more sugar in my blood over the years, but I was also showing a lot more skin with my short sleeves compared to his wisely-chosen long ones.  It was almost impossible to stop to watch birds!

Stop and they swarm, clouding your vision and darkening the sky above you,
You can feel the moisure being drawn from your body,
Blood stains seem to appear through your shirt and even pants,
Are they lifting you off the ground now, to carry you away to the great Mosquito Queen?

A bird?  What bird?  Did you see a bird?

(I did add 4 new species in spite of the black horde!)