Another Page Another page on the calendar will soon turn. A few leaves hang tenaciously from otherwise nude branches. The wonderful peeling barks of the physocarpus shrubs show layers of cinnamon and ecru. The peels flutter in the breeze or hang droopily down in the stillness.

Down in the swamp, a few mallards and hooded mergansers swim or fly in to land with loud calls. Gray clouds skim across the sky, too high to be depressing, but portending storms to come in the months ahead.

A thin coating of ice surrounds the yellowing growth along the water’s edge and reaches tentatively towards the middle. Each night it creeps out a few more inches. Sedges and grasses, old cattails and blue iris stalks whisper together in the wind.
 
The ducks float out in the middle, where the deeper water gives protection against the creeping vise of ice. I’ve brought my camera along to try to capture some of the wonder I feel, but after a few shots, I give up the attempt. The swimmers are too far away for good images and I already have dozens of shots of reflections. I switch to the binoculars to watch instead and am amazed again at what I see: Who would think to put that spot of velvet blue on the male’s head?

There’s no sense of effort to the duck’s swimming. It’s as if an underwater conveyer belt is passing him from tree stump to grass clump. His paddling feet betray no exertion. Barely a ripple follows behind him. Is the wind pulling him along?

Suddenly a nearby female mallard turns topsy turvy. One moment, her brown head is pointing a path straight ahead; the next, her tail end is sticking up in the air. Is that a stump the beavers left behind? Had I not seen her make the movement, I could have watched that stump for minutes and not realized it was alive. She remains feeding for a long time, then abruptly but smoothly, the head and tail switch positions and she’s once more a recognizable duck.

One of the things I love about the swamp is the searching it requires of me. When I walk down the path, stepping over the low, decaying stump, easing down the slippery hill, and climbing up the small mound to stand a few feet back from the water’s edge, I never know what wonders will unfold before me. It’s necessary to stand quietly and swing my head slowly from the beaver dam past the old, sunken lodge and a new high, domed one, to the space under the heron nests, and finally, around to the swamp’s far northwest edge, where the large rock stands up against the shore.

I must search slowly, carefully, or I’ll miss the beaver quietly moving among the reflections, the Canada goose floating near last spring’s nesting site, the barred owl on a limb on the far shore. There are hiding places out there in what was once a forest and is now a bowl of water, a few large rocks, and several dead trees. Only patience can reveal what is there.

I can watch for a long spell before noticing any movement. Then I realize a duck has been floating serenely, barely moving near a withered trunk. Gradually I notice he is not alone as a female and another male come into view. The brown females are beautifully camouflaged and blend into the background, so that even their swimming seems to be no more than grasses waving. The bright, iridescent head of the male mallard weaves into the background stalks and disappears. The hooded merganser’s brown and black body likewise slips into the background foliage while the male’s white chest and head patch seem to be mere reflections on the water.

Today no frogs poke their yellow chests up as they croak their calls. No black-capped chickadee slips quietly into the nest hidden in the broken tree trunk. The breeding season is long over. I expect the frogs have burrowed down into the mud. The little black-and-white birds are still around, ‘dee-dee-deeing’ whenever they see danger. I don’t know if they are the same ones that nested here last summer or if they are migrants from further north. It doesn’t matter.

A few more oak leaves flutter down. The ducks move off and reluctantly I turn to leave. As always, I feel a sense of calmness after my visit with nature. Winter is coming, yes, the calendar will turn another page, but seasonal change is simply another aspect of the natural world. Like the ducks, we need to accept the change and keep swimming on.

By Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener


Posted November 19, 2010