Another damp day. The sky is like a steel-grey cloud-umbrella with lighter, more hopeful colors showing on every horizon. The ponds are generally quiet and still, save for a group of three geese, necks arched and honking like the last trump in an attempt to discourage the landing of a fourth goose on their island. The inflow to the pond is still fast and the level is rising so maybe the geese are planning ahead. The rapid influx of river water has resulted in this end of the ponds being brown and cloudy. Maybe this is why my heron is sitting, hunched and looking thoroughly teed-off and hungry.
Further up, the ponds are clear as the particulates have sedimented out. Here a flotilla of Buffleheads are diving in unison and popping up still in formation. Very nice and tidy, as are their outfits. They will easily succeed in the audition for ‘Pond Cheerleaders’. No one else comes near to this display of synchronized swimming, if their beaks were flexible, they would be wearing fixed smiles. The other groups of ducks that stick together are more difficult to identify. The males and females have coloring like Ruddies but the males have Merganser-like crests. They migrated here at same time as the Buffleheads but to me they remain mysterious and in disguise.
Our adventurous slugs are out again, but today they have eschewed their unidirectional travel. Their headings appears much more random, with many bending round to head home to follow those who have already made that wise decision as the allure of the excitement on the blacktop fades in comparison with cozy plenty of the grassy herbage of home.
