There’s a certain kind of winter day here — temperatures around freezing, weak wintery sunshine, skies that mix soft greys, blues and creams as ethereally as a fine kid-mohair/silk yarn — that seems to draw the winter ducks into our little bay (or it might simply be that this is the kind of day it takes for me to notice said ducks). I’ve been watching the surf scoters this morning. I’m not a birder, so I have no idea if my estimate is credible, but there are probably 60-100 in the crowd down at the beach. The morning’s drama has been watching them respond to the pair of bald eagles who seem committed to a very deliberate campaign of terror, flying low over the scoters and out towards the sea, then swivelling back and over again before landing in the arbutus tree twenty feet from my front deck, screeching that alarming eagle screech the whole trip. Several times, on landing, they’ve broken off the branches they’d chosen for perches, testifying to their force.
Can’t bear the tension of this drama, so I’m off to catch a ferry, and then another ferry to head to the city. I’ll probably stop and look at “my coat” on the way.
