A bunch of you live in areas with seasonal population shifts - the snowbirds and the sunbirds show up, and all of a sudden, everything changes - traffic gets bad, the restaurants are crowded, and weird people want to look at condos. Here, we just get the birds.
It starts in March with the ducks - they're just transients, on their way much further north, but we'll have as many as a couple of hundred passing through at once. They're reasonably well-behaved and only moderately noisy. And there are some additional geese to temporarily supplement our year-round guys - they're a bit rowdier.
Around mid-April, the summer regulars show up. Our herons arrived last week - we usually have 2-3 pairs nesting on the far side of the lake. They're among the alpha predators here, bad news for anything that lays eggs or swims in the shallows. The ospreys have returned as well, along with the red-winged blackbirds, the summer mallards, and the gulls. The bald eagles are coming around a bit more, and it's always nice to see them.
And we were very happy to see Lonesome Sam yesterday. A confirmed bachelor, he has been a summer regular on the lake since we moved here 12 years ago, and his stately presence always provides a sense of peace and tranquility.
Comments(23)