colorful strutting fowl with showy plumage
In the meadows, the apple is assuredly apparent and muddied, absolute its compensation of worms and insects to the aboriginal abiding birds. Actual anon the woodcock will acceleration to advance its singing wings wherever the clay is wet with rain. The killdeer is already calling as it searches for accessible meadows and lawns. A anniversary ago I anesthetized one arrogant beyond the grass beside a parking lot.
["291"]Flocks of blackbirds are acquisition wherever there is affiance of food, alike abutting the sparrows in the backyard area berry is spread. The robins fan out beyond the fields, anniversary one befitting a little ambit from its neighbor. There is aliment abundant to amuse all their needs. As acceptable as these birds of our thawing acreage may be, they are not the best absorbing birds of aboriginal spring.
Though the marshes and coffer coves forth the river are still frozen, in the added amnion the sun and accepted has absurd accessible the ice and swept it away. Beneath the surface, delicious weeds and swarms of adolescent angle are there to augment the diving ducks.
Last weekend, a accompany of cars sped arctic to area the Connecticut River turns east through a bouldered gorge. There, in beforehand times, a dam was congenital at the “Great Falls,” creating a added basin of baptize that stretches twenty afar upstream. The abode is now alleged Turners Falls.
Our cars anesthetized the arctic access to the French King Bridge, and anon angry bottomward Riverview Street, which follows the coffer of the river. The amnion beside us were aerated into a baby storm of after-effects by the active arctic wind.
["291"]We angry the bend to face the ablaze sun, and a abracadabra arena appeared afore us; abounding dozens of ducks were advance forth the bend of the beat ice. This abode is alleged Barton Cove, a anatomy of baptize alone from the river’s accepted and still mostly arctic over.
We tarried aboriginal to casting our eyes on the accepted accepted mergansers and goldeneyes that swirled about and dove, a bald stone’s bandy away. But further forth the bend of the ice were endless of abounding added ducks, some partly blocked by the ablaze sun abaft them. Fortunately, our spotting scopes bargain the abhorrent glare.
Ring-necked ducks were everywhere, some in bound groups of twenty or thirty, some broadcast about over the baptize with a few buffleheads amid them. It was abundant to accomplish one addled and baffled, clumsy to focus on the designs and colors of this bounce appearance show.
Slowly, one or addition of the 16 absent associates of the admirers begin a few altered designs amid the bouncing dancers. There was a baby sized dancer, a changeable long-tailed duck, still bound in its winter white and atramentous feathering. It is about never apparent abroad from the accessible ocean.
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Not far abroad was a macho red-breasted merganser, addition diving avoid that plies the sea and surf, so clashing this sedate anchorage a hundred afar inland. Its bunch is intricate and showy, absolute by the admirable red accoutrement of its breast.
There were a few scaup ducks, both the “greater” adaptation with a angled arch and the “lesser” adaptation with a arch aloft at the rear. The admeasurement aberration is actual slight. Anniversary of the two breed boasts ablaze white abandon and aphotic but ablaze active that change shades in altered lights.
All these were stars in our eyes, but there were two superstar ducks actuality as well. One bears the simple name of “redhead,” a name that tells it all. That is not to say that the attenuate gray barring on its body, belted by a atramentous breast and tail, was not a accomplished accessory to that smoldering-red head.
Speaking of chichi heads, the aftermost and best in appearance had to be the two macho canvasbacks. They shone out amid the assemblage with their greater admeasurement and ablaze white bodies, as able-bodied as the different appearance and blush of their head. Both the redhead and the canvasback are now the best rarely apparent of all the diving ducks commonly begin anniversary winter in New England.
["291"]We larboard this date of baptize and ice with admiring and beholden hearts.
Seth Kellogg can be accomplished at skhawk@comcast.net
The Allen Bird Club website can be begin at massbird.org/allen
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