Wet And Wild

Sprucing up or just playing around?

"You don't drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there." ~ Edwin Cole

I don't know if this goose is just playing around with the water or really taking a bath. But the old saying is true... "like water off of a duck's back"... the water doesn't seem to get them that wet, what with the oily coating on each feather they so carefully preen and distribute to the very tips. It's like a natural wet suit for these water loving creatures.

With the colder weather this fall our full compliment of geese and ducks has returned. Canada geese are here all year and their numbers are multiplying, but others migrate in and out. We live sort of sandwiched in between two golf courses and a preserve and are about five miles from the northeastern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. Along the main east-west (sort of) road, the golf course has a long and narrow pond. When we have the remnants of tropical storms or nor'easters with ten or twelve inches of rain, this pond overflows and has even flooded the road. Water expands to fill the adjacent sand traps as well. With this fall's cold temperatures after Thanksgiving ice formed around the edges and in the shaded spots.

Here the seagulls, ducks and geese gather, somedays it looks like a huge church congregation. The Canada geese first meet and have breakfast on the golf course.. bits of grass ... or they are across the road at the community college at another restaurant. Usually there is a group of twenty or so smaller ducks, huddled on the sand in long rows two or three deep... they are the choir in practice. A few mallards float on the calm waters... they just keep together in family groups or the never ending pursuit of two males after one female. One or two crane watch the proceedings from a rock at the edge... keeping to themselves. And the seagulls make their dissonant noise... often drowning out the choir. Eventually, the Canada geese gather into one force, waddling across the four lane road and stopping traffic in the process. The group floats quietly on the pond... and the service begins.

As with their human counterparts... the attendance at these services seems greater in the winter... I guess they are all at the beach in the summer. I haven't been back to Mt. Trashmore since we moved to Chesapeake... I wonder how their attendance is going?

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Carmi's Theme ~ Wet
See It Sunday ~ Birds