Nests & Breakfast

Greetings feathered friends! I'm your inn-keeper on Elmira Pond. From this day forward all dogs will stay leashed. Sad for them, but I respect your nests. Feel free to frolic, dabble and dive. There's plenty of rushes and mud for nests. Eat what you'd like; our specialty is bull-frog. 

Everything is organic; I pull noxious weeds by hand so you might have a healthy stay while at Elmira Pond. Watch out for bald eagles and the local murder of crows. Crows like eggs and eagles eat ducks. I'll yell at the eagles if I see them bullying my guests. 

Don't mind me with my camera, binos and books; I'm only watching and writing. You might end up in my novel.

                                ~ From my imaginary guest pamphlet, 
                                  Nests & Breakfast on Elmira Pond

A Pool of Their Own, March 23

Blue Membrane of Ice, March 24

First Guests, March 24

Open Water Attracts First Bufflehead, March 25

Bufflehead in Flight (Note Full White Patch Under Wing)

Mallards, March 25

Male Hooded Merganser, March 26

American Wigeons, March 26

Floating Bufflehead, March 27

Geese and Wigeons Dabbling, March 27

Indeed, I do feel like an inn-keeper at the beginning of tourist season. Guests return, and there's such life in this place that it feels electrified; lights blazing. Trucks, tourists and trains trundle past my house on Hwy. 95, probably never seeing the bog pond that lies cupped in a slight bowl beyond the horse pasture. It seems unimpressive, yet it runs deep beyond smooth banks of rushes and grass. In summer, the grass grows so tall, it looks hidden. Yet divers plunder this pond's depths for fresh fish and frogs. Dabblers nibble aquatic plants and insects. Horses, deer, elk and moose draw drinking water from its pools.

It's a migratory duck haven. My inn-keeping duties are light--after all, I don't have to prepare breakfasts or make nests. I simply keep dogs away and commit to organic practices. In return, I observe and record. Often I'm wrong in what I think I see, but it's not about being right. It's about being present in the moment; experiencing the birds; witnessing miracles of beauty flashing bright as any star.

In one week, the pond has shed its ice, and the moments have begun. I welcome back my feathered guests to Elmira Pond.

March 23, 2014: Ilya falls through ice thin as egg-shells. Later in the day two Canada geese paddle in a pool of their own in the only open water on the pond.

March 24, 2014: Ma and Pa Goose return to their pool, bending beneath the water to nibble at plants. They honk at everything that flies overhead, having claimed this spot of water. Today the ice is so thin you can see it ripple beneath the membrane of ice. Wind will hasten the melt.

March 25, 2014: It's early morning and Todd takes out the dogs to pee. I'm yawning at the upstairs window, blurry-eyed from sleep, thinking about returning to the warmth of my bed. Like a compulsive, I check the ice status every morning, and I'm thrilled to see most of it gone. Then I see white floating on the pond. So soon? Open water is like displaying a neon sign. Already we have a new guest. My heart pounds as I grab the binoculars. It's a duck...white...it's a bufflehead! I grab my camera and get the first few duck shots of the new pond season.

Bed, as tempting as it was 20 seconds ago, no longer calls. I'm scoping the pond and see tawny little ducks floating in a cluster. Two pairs of mallards coast past, looming large. I never realized how big mallards are. I adjust the binos and look at the little ducks with white crown stripes that dip all the way to gray beaks. American wigeons. They wheeze, "peep, peep," like a cute child's toy. All day, I'm running from window to window and getting as close to the pond as I dare without frightening the guests. In one day the ice is gone and the ducks are back. One day.

March 26, 2014: How quickly my morning routine evolves to include the window with its overhead view of the pond. I'm already wondering when Blue Heron will return. I can't stop going to the window. There's the geese, the mallrads, the wigeons. The bufflehead returned. Yes, no? I see the white head. He dives. Buffleheads dive. The wigeons dabble. He surfaces; white head, white chest. Wait, that's wrong. I look harder...then I see the long black beak. Merganser! It's a hooded merganser! Funny how the big head of the bufflehead looks like the big hood of the merganser. I'm happy-dancing in the window.

By evening the pond gives off its first hatch; fish rise. Life is so fast, so miraculous. Had I blinked I would have missed the moments between ice-melt and re-birth. But I'm not missing the ducks. I gaze often and giggle out loud.

March 27, 2014: Bufflehead, hooded merganser, wigeons, mallards and geese all grace the pond.  I'm watching for Blue Heron. Daily. I'm watching.

I'm the inn-keeper of Elmira Pond.

Hot Winds Blow

A Surprise

New Duck Bed

Lady Mergansers

Robin Grab a Grasshopper!

Osprey Feathers

Sticky Geranium for Sore Feet

Blue Heron Island

Dusty Horses

Morning Pond Report:

Another sunny day, low humidity and the air feels crisp. No wonder forest fires are so precarious this time of year out west. Day by day, little by little, moisture dries up like crackled dirt that was once a mud puddle. A hot wind blows.

Drinking a glass of cool well water, I see something like a clod of dirt on the grass I watered last night. A new gopher hole? It moves, untucking a broad bill from  a wing. It's a mallard hen. The morning sun is just now touching her brown mottled feathers, illuminating the green grass around her. She has an eye stripe and a sweet face.

This is the first time a pond guest has come so close to the house. Maybe the wet grass felt cool to her last night or it seemed like a safe spot to bed down. My daughter told me that water would bring in the birds, but I thought it a redundant offering, being so close to a pond. But perhaps she is right. Now I am thinking of watering as part of birding.

Down on the pond, it even feels warm under the apple tree. My clothes are damp and drying fast, having watered my garden and picked more raspberries. The three Lady Mergansers are floating near an emerging island of aquatic plants. The more I look at their tails, the more I think they look like the back ends of turkey tails. Not much activity, just languid floating like raspberries in lemonade, which sounds good right about now.

Blue Heron is preening still, but within the reeds of his island. I watch his white head bobble around on the end of his neck like a vacuum cleaner hose, sucking out stray feathers. A robin hops from fence post to fence post. Usually the robins flit around with insects in beak. It sounds as if the new symphony in town is of the grasshopper order. Hopefully hoppers go on the pond menu soon, before my garden is discovered.

Almost hidden by the canopy of leaves, I see something flying low. It's an osprey. With wings and tail splayed he flies over the pond slowly as if scoping out a section of fast food joints. He continues on, passing on a pond snack. He seems to land in the trees across the pasture south, but I can't see him even in the binoculars.

In front of me not 25 yards, something is blooming pink. I try to scope them out with the binos, but the flowers are too close. I suppose that means I can actually walk over and look. They are tiny pink stars clustered like the milky-way in the grass. Sticky geranium, if my comparisons are correct. According the the US Forest Service, they have medicinal properties including a cure for sore feet. Interesting.

Seems the horses are curious as to what prompted me from my chair. I rub their foreheads at the fence-line and shoo away a horse-fly or two. Both horses are dusty. We all need a dip in cool waters, relief from this western summer wind.