Water Wars

I suppose war is a strong word, lets just say, “water skirmishes” have been taking place over the last week on Cedar Lake where this cottage is. Interloping swans have tried to make their moves, both on the lady swan here and the territory and it has led to some lively displays.


“So sorry, this female is taken, this lake is taken” might be the gentler way to handle this, but swans don’t really go in for gentle hints. Rather, at the first fly over of any other swans, this pair, first the male, then the female, puff those wings up in what is always a lovely sight, but definitely portends trouble.

The first interloper this week was a lone male, probably a young one, not yet mated, and he defiantly seemed to be making a pass at this female on the pond, which also is probably young. When I first arrived here in August, she was alone herself. I went away for 10 days and came back to find a suitor had arrived and been accepted. I don’t know if it is typical for young swans to try and steal another’s mate. They do generally mate for life, but who knows, maybe there is a trial period or maybe this male just had a lot of audacity.

At any rate, the reigning male would have none of it. First the high-speed, wings-up, charge followed by a race along the surface as he gained speed, and then the aerial chase. Wow, it was something. Wings beating the air noisily, sharp turns as he chased the male one way and another. All under the watchful eye of the young lady in question who also kept her wings fluffed up and stayed true to her man. The vanquished male finally took the hint and hasn’t reappeared since. Swans do mate for life, although there are occasional separations, but the human divorce rate is far higher then the swans, so perhaps she has made her choice and will be true to “till death do we part”.

A few days later, not a lone male, but a pair arrived, one of which still had some gray in its plumage. Probably another young couple looking for a place to call their own until the ice arrived. They landed on the far side of the lake. Instantly the resident pair went into action. Up went the wings and it was clear this wasn’t the Welcome Wagon arriving.
The new pair lifted off, flew to the far side but that wasn’t good enough. The huffy swans were heading their way and without arguing further the new pair left, continuing their search elsewhere.

And you see, that is the trouble with swans. I know I have written about this before, that they are an invasive species here in the US. Europe is their home, but they were brought here to look fetching on some rich person’s estate and now we have zillions of them. Because they are so territorial, even more so during breeding season, our local waterfowl are often driven off. The display I saw this week exemplifies what goes on in the ponds in spring and it seems, to some degree in the fall too.

I am guessing here, but I suppose a larger lake like this, and it is really more like a large pond, is preferred to the many kettle hole ponds that exist on the Cape for it probably won’t freeze up as quickly. Once winter has really set in, and all the fresh water is frozen, these swans will congregate far more amiably on the salt marshes and estuaries. Last year we must have seen 100 swans on an estuary in Mashpee.

As I write this there is mist curling over the water brought on by a cold night and the swans are right in front of me and seem intent on sleeping in. The small trio of Grebes is diving close to them but the swans barely raise their heads. Ring necked ducks and Buffleheads don’t raise the eyebrow either. Perhaps in the fall they are just intent on keeping other swans who might compete for their food, off the lake.

Well, I am supposed to be on the road to Baltimore for Thanksgiving with my family. Better close up the computer and get a move on. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and may the blessings of this beautifully created world, free for those who chose to see it, be yours now and always.

Graced by Grebes

The grebe I feel graced to see, is the Pied-billed Grebe, with the fun scientific name of (Podilymbus podiceps) which I believe, with all those “Podi’s”, is a tribute to its marvelous feet. Considered to be one of the most perfectly adapted waterbirds, it has fairly large feet that have both lobes and partial webbing and toes that are more flattened like our toenails than curved. Put it all together and it makes them powerful swimmers. One small snag though is that its feet are placed so far back on its body that it can’t launch into flight from the ground, and on water it has to run like the dickens to finally get airborne. For that matter, if any poor Grebe gets tossed inland during a storm it would probably require a rescue from some kind passer-by. I read that they have on occasion mistaken wet highways for water with, of course, disastrous results.

I feel “graced” to see one, for they are somewhat shy, and unlike the rafts of ducks taking advantage of this small lake out my window, grebes show up all by their lonesome. I think I have written about them before too, perhaps something like “One of these ducks is not like the others”. Of course, it isn’t a duck, but in migration time might be seen with ducks, although it seems more coincidental than purposeful. For example, today the water seems absent of the Ring neck ducks, perhaps they have moved on, but the grebe is still here.


Also I am “graced” to see them for with their tiny bodies and their practically non-existent tail, they are extra adorable as they dive under water. Now, I have never seen this, but I am watching for it, I hear they can also just “sink” under the water. That they have the ability to adjust their buoyancy so if they want to be really stealthy they just slowly sink down. See how life is so worth living! The thought that I have never seen this, but would love to see it, is a reason to look forward to each new day. Maybe today.

And here’s another nifty fact. They are the only bird I have ever heard of who makes feathers a part of its diet. It has been noted that a full 50% of their stomach content can be made up of feathers. The thought is, as fish eaters, perhaps they ingest the feathers to line their stomach and protect it from sharp fish bones. Wow. We all know that many birds swallow sand, small stones; alligators, dinosaurs, they all swallow larger stones to help digest their food, to grind the food as it churns in their stomach, but this is a little different. Even the young grebes are fed the feathers of the parent birds.

If you are lucky enough to live in their breeding ground, which I believe I am on the edge of here on the Cape, you may get a chance to see them carrying their young on their back. I also read that they sometimes dive under with the chicks still on their back. I wonder if they are on when they resurface. Another thing to set your hopeful sights on.

Perhaps where you live there is no chance of seeing a Grebe, but still there will be something else to be “graced” by. Feel free to share with me what that is. Have a lovely grace-filled day everyone.

"One Misty Moisty Morning"

After the non-stop sunshine of Texas it was a delight to come back to a “misty, moisty, morning” on the Cape. Fog had rolled in, a slight mist was falling, and because this cottage has a wall of windows that allows the entire lake to be seen, I could sit here with a cup of coffee and be enchanted by views of the swans swimming into view through wisps of fog. Then the rack of Buffleheads and the Ring Necks all started to appear out of the mist. The kind of view that makes me weep with the beauty of it.

It’s amazing how, even though I can see it all perfectly from inside where it is warm and dry, I still feel compelled to pull on boots and head out to be “in” it. As soon as I got outside I could hear a White Throated Sparrow singing its “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody” song. I know I have written about it before, how it’s one of the songbirds that must “learn” its song from listening to other males. It’s the way that you can tell if you are hearing an adult White Throated or a juvenile male. The younger sparrow often doesn’t have the whole song down.

I used to hear one in my old yard that would keep repeating the beginning “Old Sam, Old Sam, Old Sam peee” but that was as far as it got. Now, in this cottage, I hear what still seems to be a young bird, but further along in its lessons, now that it is fall. For a good half hour it kept repeating the song, coming up with the whole cadence half way through its concert, repeating it correctly several times.

Now, the interesting thing is, this is fall, not really the time for singing to impress the ladies, but I remember reading once in Edwin Way Teale’s book, “A Walk Through the Year” that he too heard a White Throated Sparrow singing away on a foggy day in fall. He thought that it might be because the weather reminded it of its nesting grounds in the cold, often drippy, northern reaches of Canada and so it set it to singing. I wonder. Either way, I was glad to hear it and the same thing was repeated the next day when the weather still was wet and cool. Then we had a spell of “Indian summer” days and not a word from my sparrow. Interesting.

Other “winter” birds that have arrived of late, the Dark Eyed Junco’s, “snowbirds”, have settled in, and the shrubs that border the bog I walk around are alive with the “tick tick” sound they make and the flash of black and white tail feathers you see when they fly. Noting the arrival of “Snowbirds” in the fall and their exit in the spring is something I will miss in Texas. But there will be the comings and goings of western birds to learn to look for. Still, I was happy to have one last season to see these.

And, oh, the Golden Crowned Kinglets are flitting about right out my window. Second smallest bird after the hummingbird, they too come from the north and mix with flocks of chickadees and titmice here. And here is something I had never noticed before, how they flutter at the end of the branches, almost hummingbird-like. At least the one in my yard is doing that. They are searching out wintering insect egg sacs, spiders etc on the branches and as this one fluttered under one branch end after another. I wished I had super strong binoculars to see if it was actually finding anything there. Between it’s moving too fast to be seen, and my inability to focus quickly enough on the new spot it was occupying, I was never able to see if it was eating. Either way it was a treat to see it at all, for often they are too high in the tree to make out anything but their shape and hear their cal. It is slightly higher than the chickadees, often a repeated “tzee, tzee, tzee”, and it is the three times “tzee” that makes you pretty sure it is them.

One last delight and I will let you go, another otter sighting! Right out the window, but only briefly, a floating “brown log” that flipped its “wider than a muskrat, narrower than a beaver, tail” and disappeared. We don’t have beavers on the Cape and muskrats more often swim at the surface and would never have presented such a long body so I am sure it was an otter. And that sort of thing can keep me happy for weeks! And peeled. I keep returning to the spot and, of course, it isn’t there. Otters cover a lot of territory to meet their heavy feeding demands, so seeing one in the same spot isn’t likely, but still. It may cycle around this way again.

Today is also a gray, but warm November day. I shall cherish each gray day for I fear a paucity of them in Texas. If it’s “a misty moisty morning” where you are, may you find it equally beautiful. For you who treasure nursery rhymes as much as I do, I believe that comes from Mother Goose.

“One misty moisty morning
when cloudy was the weather
I chanced to meet an old man clothed all in leather.
Clothed all in leather from his feet(?) to his chin
with a “How do you do?” and a “How do you do?
and a “How do you do?” again”.

Entertained by a Bevy of Buffleheads

One positive side of this nomadic life I am leading is that life is always a surprise. I leave this part of the globe for another for 10 days and come home to a largely altered landscape. In my absence this time; the cranberry leaves completed their turn from summer olive drab to winter maroon, well, winter cranberry really, the leaves of the Tupelos at the waters edge are all on the ground, while the yellow and russet Oaks come down one by one, but best of all, the winter ducks have begun to cover the pond.

At the bog pond at my house, I used to wish there was a sign in sheet somewhere, for one day the pond would have Green Wing Teals, then later Hooded Mergansers and a few Buffleheads and they would come and go without a “by your leave”. Such is the way with a migrating duck. Here on the pond in Falmouth, I woke that first misty day to see, not only the pair of swans coming through this mist, but rafts of Ring Necked ducks and a whole flotilla of Buffleheads.

And let me say right here, I LOVE Buffleheads.
I love the way they can all be on the surface one minute, then, like a well practiced diving team, all disappear at once.
I used to think the one or two Buffleheads left on the surface just represented the clueless few who somehow, and I could always personally relate to this, missed the signal that “we are all diving under now”. In researching these ducks I found that no, they aren’t clueless, they are the brave sentinels that will watch out for danger as the others fill up on pond weeds and the many yummy insects and snails that cling to them.

And whereas you may see huge flocks of other diving ducks, say the Eiders and Scoters that you see on the bays, these Buffleheads are so testy at times that they could never get along in such huge numbers. The 50 or so I had on my pond are about as large as their flocks get. They are the smallest diving duck, about 13-15” and maybe they have a “Napoleon complex” but either way they are reported to be among the feistiest.

Even though it isn’t the breeding season, and they are only stopping by for awhile, so you wouldn’t think territorial disputes would break out, I stood and watched two males, chase and head-bob like crazy at each other, all seemingly over the one female in their midst. They do mate for life, so maybe the one male was making moves on the others Mrs, such a shameless society we live in today, but either way they kept chasing each other, continuing far longer than I had time to watch.

And here is the fun part of watching Buffleheads go through these kind of antics; they charge each other, then fly a short way past to come to a truly skidding halt in front of the other duck. In this case these two kept skidding past the female, then past each other and always you could just imagine the cartoon-like puffs of smoke under their webbed feet. Really, other ducks come in for a splashy landing, but I don’t know of any other that truly seem to “skid in”. Probably others do, I just don’t know about them.

So, if by any chance you have Buffleheads in your area, and you might for they fan out from Canada coming south on all the major flyways, take a moment to watch and if you are lucky, you may see either the disappearing-underwater-at-once act, or the skidding-into-home scene; wonderful entertainment for a fall day.

I also have wracks of Ring Necked ducks but we shall deal with them later. You have a life to get back too. Ah, by the way, a friend at work came up with a good new name for this blog. Once I have to truly leave I can call it a “blog without a bog”! Although for the sake of easy finding I would keep the website the same. But for nowjj I still have the joy of a pond and a bog and the ocean and the woods. Lucky me.

"You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone"

(Author’s note: Once again this will include more personal history than natural history, but surely nature will be worked into it somewhere. I ask your patience while I rant a little.)

If it’s Thursday, perhaps this is Cape Cod again. My zip code displacement is getting to me. I just returned from a nine-day house-hunting trip to San Antonio. All houses, all of the time; houses that looked like they grew on runners, for each row popped up identical buildings, side by side, row on row- to say I found that a tad depressing is an understatement.

Not that they weren’t beautiful houses; they were, immaculate houses, perfectly perfect houses, mostly under 10 yrs old. For that matter that was part of the problem, it was hard to imagine my less-than-perfect possessions blending well with these pristine surroundings. On top of that, I hardly ever choose a house for the house itself but more for the view out the window. And here, the view was of the next cloned house. Finally, I put “mature trees” into the search and that helped a little. But the more mature trees I looked for, the further I kept getting from the area my husband is working in.

Then I got greedy, and started saying I wasn’t looking for ¼ acre lots, but rather 1 acre. That dropped a few thousand houses out of the market just like that. It was the best thing I ever did, and now houses in the Texas “Hill Country” popped into view. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law live there and they always said it was the only place to look.

So now, with apologies to my poor husband who will have to consider slogging through traffic as bad as any we faced in DC, I have found a property or two with fabulous look-out-the-window appeal. One sits atop a hill with a view of Live Oak and Cedar’s as far as you can see.

And the other has a little over two acres of a myriad of plantings, which qualify it as a Certified Wildlife Habitat- very cool.
My first thought was that for the first few months I could simply blog about what I was discovering in my yard. Monarch’s were omnipresent here also, much closer to their destination in the Sierra Nevada’s than the Florida ones. This second house also boasts the largest tree I saw in TX and its right out my window! The house was also the only one I saw that looked lived in. It wasn’t perfectly perfect but homey, and much more me than any of the others. So now, dear reader, you must wait along with me to see which one will win the day. And then, what shall we call this blog? A “Blog from the Bog” was so lyrical. “The Nature of My Story”, “Living with Less Chlorophyll” – it will take some thought.

Meanwhile I promised some nature. The most stunning thing about the area is that wherever you are, in the inner circle of the city, or on the fringes, there are deer; dozens of deer, denizens of deer, dangerous amounts of deer. One strike against the house on top of the hill is that it requires my husband to navigate his way down the hill on roads that are the major hang out areas for deer with time on their hands. Add, that he will be traveling in the dark most days and we can see a collision course in his future. In a duel of “Large Buck vs. Aged Escort”, I would put my money on the buck.

Clearly something has gone very wrong with the food chain. I shall have to look into this, but one guess is that all those bounty-hunting days of the past have brought us the welfare state of deer we have in the present. Too many sweet fawns being born where there is little food, plus this historic drought isn’t helping either. Ironically, the house that purports to be a “Wildlife Habitat” has a high electric fence around it; one supposes to keep the wildlife out. At least the foraging herbivores that would nibble down all the protected plants.

Surely I will have a lot to learn. I have lived in New Mexico before and did love that. I will concentrate on embracing my “inner cowboy” my “inner lizard” and try not to think of what I will not see much of any more: amphibians, clouds, green grass, colored leaves, mushrooms, moss, oceans, marshes, ponds, cranberries floating in a flooded bog etc, etc. In reference to the title of this piece, I DID know what I had, and it won’t really be gone, but still existing 1,000’s of miles from where I will be.

But it will be all right. A naturalist, I tell everyone, is never bored. Let’s just see if I can live up to my own maxims. Of course, half the fun will be sharing it with all of you. But the house isn’t bought yet, so more weeks of slipping from NE to MD to TN and back again. Already there is another blog brewing about some Bufflehead antics that are taking place right out my window here in North Falmouth. This glorious set of windows overlooking the pond has the most glorious view of all. So stay tuned, “bog blogging” isn’t over yet.