Home
February 9, 1997
I wasn't up for much of an outing, still being quite tired and all, but it was too nice a day to pass up being outdoors. So we went to Newburyport for lunch at Ciro's and a walk along the Merrimack River on the boardwalk. Tiny little icebergs or big chunks of ice depending on your point of view floated down river and out to sea. If you had a miniature Titanic you could film special effects amidst the miniature icebergs. It's too early for ice-out up north and Newburyport harbor has been pretty much open all winter so I'm not sure where these ice objects started their trek to the Gulf of Maine. Among the ice and the buoys a little black speck popped up. A guy sitting on the bench writing pointed it out to us. "Didja see the seal?" Sure enough, a closer look revealed the little black speck had whiskers and was definitely not either an iceberg or a buoy or a mallard. The seal dove. We waited for it to come up for a few minutes but then started walking again to stay warm. At the end of the boardwalk we were just watching how fast the current was moving into the gulf. A little black speck popped up fairly close to us. Close enough that we didn't have to be told it was the seal. Even Nancy recognized it as a seal immediately. It was looking right at us. I exclaimed "hey, there's the seal!" and a couple walking on the boardwalk stopped to look. The man: "I can't remember the last time there was a seal in the Merrimack". The woman:"It's definitely a seal and its in the Merrimack." Their conversation continued about like that until the seal dove again.
There is a little colony of seals that hang out at Salisbury Beach, which is not that long a swim from the mouth of the Merrimack for a healthy seal. I'm not sure why more of them don't come down to the harbor for a snack. Plenty o' fish...
We walked back.
At the other end of the boardwalk some kids were feeding bread to a bunch of mallards, a lot of mallards, a way wicked lot of mallards. The mallards were swarming over the end of the boat ramp like some kind of insects. They were quacking and muttering like crazy. More kept coming. They arrived in pairs, splashing down at the periphery of the crowd and then fighting their way in toward the boat ramp. The breaders left. The mallards stayed, chasing each other and quacking up a storm. A car pulled up and they swarmed up the ramp again in total herd behavior. They moved like one organism. It was weird.