Question: “What is black and white and ‘red’ all over? Answer: A huge flock of Black Skimmers. Close to a thousand of these birds were avoiding the strong winds that limited most bird activity here yesterday so they took shelter on the parking lot of a vacant marina in Grand Isle, LA. Seeing this sea of black, white, and red reminded me of that old “Dad” joke, told often by my own Dad. The original answer to the question was “a newspaper” but that probably makes no sense to younger generations what with the disappearance of most traditional newspapers. In fact, I have to admit that when I first heard my Dad tell this joke, I was quite young and didn’t understand the nuanced pun (“red” vs. “read”) and puzzled over the answer for the longest time. If my Dad had told me back then that the answer was “a huge flock of Black Skimmers” and showed me this photograph, it would have made perfect sense to me and I wouldn’t have puzzled over it at all. At the time, I recall thinking that newspapers were only black and white and there was no red in them. I’m certain my initial misunderstanding that the joke was about color instead of a play on words, is why that tired old Dad joke comes to mind whenever I see black, white, and red together even after all these decades.