Journal of a Sabbatical

November 22, 1998

widgeons at low tide

After last night's high of the Natalie MacMaster concert, we slept in this morning and then lingered in bed. My cold seemed a little better, so I gallantly offered to drive Nancy home instead of to the bus station. I figured if we left early enough we could check out the bird life at the cove before we had to get her apartment ready for her social work support group to come over.

The tide was out when we got to the cove and I discovered or rediscovered that it's easier to see the widgeons at low tide because the area where they usually paddle around is dry then so they move in closer to the road. Conversely, the buffleheads, who hang around on the other side of the cove, move further away from the road at low tide. I must have noticed this before, but somehow it really sunk in today.

I only counted 50 or so widgeons so the other half of the flock must be off at some other part of Providence Harbor stealing food from canvasbacks and following hooded mergansers around. This group was sticking pretty close to a small flock of about 6 hooded mergansers.

Plenty of swans were out and about. The three cygnets still have some gray on them but they're more white than gray at this point and should be indistinguishable from adults before too long - probably by midwinter.

I still can't tell if any of the permanent resident Canada geese is Igor. The two flightless maimed wing ones that we could see don't look like Igor. His maimed wing is pretty compact and doesn't have any trailing feathers sticking out of it, whereas one of the two maimed ones we saw today had plenty of feathers and sort of drags the whole wing. The other one had the Igor style wing but it wasn't as compact. I should look back through my photos and do some comparisons so I can assure Nancy that Igor is still alive. Anyway, there seem to be 6 permanent resident Canada geese and I only got a good look at two of them , so perhaps Igor is among the ones I couldn't get a good look at.