March 30: Mist

spring shower

ducks already pairing up

on the misty river

January 14: Ebb

Late afternoon, ebb tide.

Silhouettes of feeding ducks

drift out of sight.

April 7: Current events

green river rising
ducks have flown to the lake
don't turn on the news

January 14: Frozen

Two degree morning.
The river has closed its white door
to diving ducks.

November 19: Riverwatch

no ducks here
late season fishermen
river calm enough to freeze

November 17: Don't we all ponder our mortality?

Darkness at 5 pm--
thinking of ducks at roost,
cold, dark water.

October 30: Buffleheads

Count six bobbing ducks,
then thirty. Coldest morning yet.
I hardly notice.

October 28: Hooded Mergansers

Driving through Belfast this afternoon after a couple of meetings, I gave myself permission to take the time to stop and watch a group of about ten Hooded Mergansers bobbing in the dark waters of a small, city-owned pond called The Muck.

Pulled over to watch
mergansers gathered on a pond.
Just that.

Hooded Merganser drake.
Photo by Ken Billington via Wikimedia Commons

March 15: Hooded Merganser

Ducks are migrating northward. After only seeing one or two for days, observed a big cluster of Buffleheads on the river late today, along with a half dozen Ring-Necked Ducks and one Hooded Merganser, a male, showing off his full "hood," strutting his stuff upriver in all his glory. A very attractive duck, but no females (of his own species, at least) were around to appreciate him. Also on the water were two pairs of geese and a pair of Mallards. It's that time of year.

Lone merganser drake
on full display.
Ice still edges the river.

March 4: Pairs of ducks

Spent the day with a bird guide friend exploring the southern Maine coast, starting at Nubble Light in York and working our way up through Wells. According to him, numbers of geese and black ducks are increasing in the marshes, meaning these waterfowl are making their way northward. Offshore, loons are beginning to molt into breeding plumage and get their spots back. Eiders coo and posture, begin to pair off, as do other ducks: goldeneyes, mergansers, scoters, Long-tailed, and the beautiful Harlequins. (The Black Scoter makes a plaintive sound that sounds just like my cat when she's hungry. One can't help but anthropomorphize and hear the longing in their voices.)

These birds breed further north. Courtship and pairing up now, while snow flurries still fill the air and they're far from nesting, will save time when they reach their breeding grounds. There, with a partner already established and courting out of the way, they can then get right to work mating and laying eggs.

Eider drakes show off,
wooing the russet hens.
High school was like this.

January 18: Ducks flying upriver

Startled by whistling wings
of ducks flying
up the frozen river.

December 26: Ice

Last night driving back from a movie, I was trying to determine if any ice had formed yet on Chickawaukie Lake. What I thought was a thin, opaque layer of ice, however, turned out to be the reflection of clouds on the water.

This afternoon looking out at the river, I saw two parallel lines running downstream, perhaps the twin wakes of a pair of ducks. Instead, they were the leading edges of ice forming outward from the opposing banks, soon to meet in the middle--a rare instance when parallel lines do intersect.

Soon growing ice
will meet in river's middle.
No more ducks.

December 16: In focus

We bought a new bird spotting scope on Saturday and were anxious to try it out today. So on a drive south, we made a quick stop at Chickawaukie Lake. A few weeks ago on a birding outing I'd tried scanning the lake with only my binoculars. I could see many ducks out on the lake, but couldn't identify any species except the near-tame Mallards pecking around my feet onshore. With our new scope, we picked out seven duck species (Bufflehead, Greater and Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Duck, Ruddy Duck, Common Goldeneye, and Mallard) and a loon, and got great looks at a raft of over 100 coots. Amazing what a difference it makes to bring those bobbing black specks into focus.

Scanning the lake for ducks,
it all becomes clear.
Time shared with my husband.

March 7: Pairing off

From my office window I can see a long patch of open water on the Megunticook River. This afternoon two pairs of spiffy common mergansers were hanging out together there, diving and drifting for a few hours. They were in bright breeding plumage and close enough that the males' green heads contrasted strikingly with their white bodies, and their bills were a vivid red-orange visible without binoculars. Pair bonds already formed, they're on their way to lakes and rivers further inland to breed.

The river opens.
Thoughts turned to nesting northward,
ducks gather, pair off.

October 29: Deer

Winter ducks are starting to arrive on our ponds--on Maces Pond this morning we saw 42 ring-necked ducks, 13 buffleheads, and 7 ruddy ducks. Also, many geese in fields. The waterfowl are piling up. Having nested far north of here, this is their idea of a winter getaway. At least as long as there's open water.

And tonight we're supposed to get our first winter storm--though it's yet unclear if we're going to get mostly snow or rain here on the coast. As we were driving home from errands today, my husband remarked that it felt more like late November than late October. The sky has that late fall cast, true, but some of the trees are still hanging onto their leaves, perhaps clutching their colorful foliage afghans as protection against the snow and wind to come.

As we were about to pass a farm field where we often see deer, my husband commented on how we probably wouldn't be seeing them there for a while now. Today is the first day of (firearms) hunting season (for Maine residents; for everyone else, it's Monday. For bow hunters, it's already started.) Just as he said that, I picked out the forms of two does standing together in the usual spot in the field, their gray bodies barely visible in the dying light. I hope they behave a bit more cautiously after the snow falls and deer become much easier to track. And if the snow cover lingers, I bet there will be a lot of hunters taking some time off on Monday.

Deer on a gray day--
how easily they're hidden
in this bleak landscape.

October 7: Ducktrap Harbor

One of my favorite local spots is a small town park at the tip of Howe Point, which ends at the mouth of the Ducktrap River in Lincolnville. When I was a kid, I'd come with my family to this cobble beach to pick mussels, look for crabs under the rocks, and swim in the deep waters of the river channel, jumping in and letting the tide pull me into the ocean. This was also a high school hangout, where we congregated on weekend nights, shivering as we stood around in the dark sipping cans of Bud. And it's still a place I like to come with a beach chair and a book on a free summer morning. Or this time of year, to enjoy the quiet and my memories while observing migrating waterfowl.

This morning I had the place all to myself: high tide, sun dazzling the beach, harbor dotted with ducks. I counted 54 red-breasted mergansers scattered on the harbor, as well as two green-winged teals very close to shore on the river side of the point. The green speculum on the teals' wings flashed a brilliant emerald in the morning light. A ring-billed gull squealed from the shore, as a young double-crested cormorant repeatedly dove in the river channel, bringing up small fish. A crow flew into the tree over my head, silent; two more flew low over the stones further up the beach, looking for something, anything.

View to the harbor, with Islesboro a dark line on the horizon

Sun-dazzled harbor--
ten minutes here watching ducks
sets the whole day's tone.

November 7: Cattle Egret

I rode the morning ferry out to the island of Vinalhaven to spend part of the day birding with a friend who lives there. A naturalist by profession, Kirk knows where to find the birds, and despite the rather bleak, chilly, and eventually rainy day, we had a good time looking. I've gotten out birding so infrequently lately that being able to spend a concentrated amount of time watching any avian life is welcome. So to be shown  a bird I hadn't previously seen in Maine within ten minutes of getting off the ferry was bonus.

Cattle egrets are a small white heron generally seen well south of Maine. Until today, the only ones I'd seen were in Florida and North Carolina. How this one ended up on an island off the Maine coast is one of those mysteries of migration. As I disembarked, I ran into one of the ferry captains who is also a birder--a birder who particularly enjoys chasing rarities. When I explained that I was out there so Kirk could show me a cattle egret, he complained, "Kirk never tells me anything!" An island resident had recently described to him seeing a strange bird, like an "all-white gull with a big yellow bill." It suddenly dawned on him that she'd been describing the cattle egret. He'd have to try to see it on a future trip.

Kirk and I headed off through town to "The Ballfield," where he'd photographed the bird not an hour earlier right next to his car. A woman driving past stopped to tell us that she had recently seen the egret following Wizard. Turns out Wizard is her horse. That made sense to Kirk, because the bird had first been spotted on Greens Island following a small flock of sheep. They got their name because they follow livestock, eating the insects such animals attract. So we went off to see Wizard. Before we got there, however, we spotted the egret hunched over in the middle of a lawn. Kirk set up his scope and we got great looks at this southern visitor.

We were soon joined by a neighbor who knew Kirk and who may or may not have been slightly inebriated. Even though we were clearly already watching the egret, he wanted to be sure we saw the bird, gesticulating wildly at it. "I knew you'd want to see it, because I know you like birds and sh*t," he declared. He had seen the egret earlier standing in a ditch full of minnows, eating. "It looked to me like a f**king big white sandpiper!" he said excitedly. "Is this rare? Because I've never seen a bird like this here before." Kirk assured him that it was very unusual.

You'd think that the rest of the day's birding would have been anticlimactic after that. But although I didn't pick up any more new Maine species, every stop had its highlights. At State Beach, a big flock of pale and lovely snow buntings flew back and forth above the pebbly shore. Horned larks hung out in the road with a single late-migrating semipalmated plover. A great blue heron croaked loudly as it flew in to land on the opposite shore. At Folly Pond, we spotted eight eagles, including a pair of adults perched side by side on a spruce bough, and a couple of brightly plumaged male wood ducks drifted past with a pied-billed grebe. At a culvert called The Boondoggle, a lone yellowlegs stood knee-deep in what must have been freezing cold water while hooded mergansers drifted and bobbed. The Basin offered up hosts of Canada geese and several more duck species.

Even the ferry ride home was not without adventure. My ferry captain friend invited me to ride back to Rockland up on the bridge, which offered great views of flocks of Bonaparte's gulls, a zillion more loons, big rafts of eiders, some surf scoters, and one gannet. He recounted the day last summer when he'd seen an albatross fly across the bow. The passage across the bay was a rough one, with swells rocking the ferry hard enough to knock over a chair at one point. The spray of whitecaps corrugated the surface of the sea. Thanks to turning back the clocks last night, twilight (and a cold rain) were settling in over Rockland Harbor as we pulled into the ferry slip. As we got ready to unload, a seal popped its head out of the water just off the port side, giving us all a long look as if wondering what we were doing out in this weather. Cattle egret, I wanted to tell the seal. And eiders, mergansers, and crossbills. I don't think it would have understood.

Brisk island wind, rain.
Egret and I share a look,
both visitors here.

June 18: Eiders

In the middle of the night I half-awoke and was vaguely aware of my cat's soft snoring at the foot of the bed. It occurred to me that the sound was kind of like the cooing noises I've heard from flocks of common eiders. I let myself imagine the eider hens gathered together in the waters around their nesting islands with all their babies among them. Eiders tend their young communally, with many females (even those who didn't have a nest that year) caring for the ducklings in groups called creches. Having many eyes watching over the flock is a big benefit for a species that's heavily preyed upon by gulls, eagles, seals, and other pelagic predators.

The word "creche" brings to mind cradles and Nativity scenes--and I think the image of these fluffy baby ducks swaying in the waves, watched over by their many mothers, was what lulled me back to sleep at last.

Cat's midnight snoring

reminds me of eider ducks'

soft calls in the creche. 

April 1: Calm Seas

I walked on the Rockland breakwater after work this afternoon with my friend Brian and his dog. It was truly the calm after the storm. Big wads of seaweed were strewn across the top of the breakwater, tossed there by recent high tides. Something big had clearly happened out there. But today the wide sky opened clear and blue above us, the sea calmly lapped the shore, the tide had pulled back to an unthreatening distance, and even the birds seemed mellow--except one insistent cardinal whose repetitive whistle sounded like a siren. We saw several loons pausing on their journey back to inland waters, some mergansers, eiders, and a small group of lingering long-tailed ducks carrying on a late afternoon chat. They seemed in no hurry to be heading northward. The air was mild, no breeze at all. Two biplanes flew over like we were in some weird nostalgic old movie. Looking back at the granite jetty as we were leaving, the long line of massive cut stones shone golden in the late light, stretching out like a delicate bridge to the lighthouse at the end.

Hold this memory:
loon's red eye gazing back, calm.
Blue skies, blue water.

Photo by Brian Willson

Simplistic, perhaps, but sometimes it's the most basic and ephemeral of images that stick with us the longest, something spotted along the road as we drove past at 50 MPH, a single bird glimpsed in a bush, the way the light shone for just one moment on a particular rock or tree.

March 10: End of Day

These late afternoons when the light lingers temper the end of my work day. Instead of anxiously rushing to finish up this task or that report, I find myself standing at the window looking out at the river reflecting these last bits of light. This is the time of day when those last golden rays of sunlight slant through the bare trees, and birds (and people) head home for the night. The vultures tilt and glide their way to their mountain roosts, ducks fly past in quick, small flocks, and chickadees make one last visit to the feeder (in fact, here's one now, as I type). Somehow leaving work with some remaining daylight doesn't seem so hard on one's state of mind as leaving in the pitch dark. There's still some time left to gather oneself, to do something, even if it's just looking out the window as dark settles, waiting for streetlights to come on and stars to brighten over the mountain.

Mallards fly upstream,
set down on reflected trees--
remains of the day.