Sewage Pond Scoter
By
Look hard–that black mass in the foreground is a male Surf Scoter, slumming it with Northern Shovelers, Gadwall, and Lesser Scaup on the Iona sewage ponds this morning.
Maybe the strong winds blew him across the road from the saltwater–where hundreds still linger–or maybe he’s sick, but the sight of this bird brought back happy and unexpected memories of my very first Surf Scoter, thirty years ago in Lincoln, Nebraska, floating on a small lake among Northern Shovelers, Gadwall, and Lesser Scaup one bright November day. That was in the days when scoters of any species were big news on the Great Plains, and I remember running across to the nearest pay phone to spread the big news.
No news at all, really, this Iona bird, but a happy reminder of how birds, even the most common, even the most commonplace, can take us back in time and far away in space–thirty years and three thousand kilometers, even.
1 Comments
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:19 am
It’s interesting, what things in nature trigger our memories. The scent of gardenias brings back a sense of my grandmother’s house, even though I was so young when she died that I don’t remember her. But I know what was in her garden!