Yellow Dust and Puffballs

A jet-black laptop is just the place to record allergy season. Left for a few minutes on the deck, it developed a thin film of yellow dust, which seems to be accreting as I type. Something tells me this news would instantly clog the sinuses of the engineers who designed the beast.

While some humans, including your LI bird blogger, suffer inordinately from the annual floral rush to fertilize the countryside, the birds seem quite unaffected. A brightly capped Red-bellied Woodpecker attracted my attention moments ago with a gentle tip-tapping about 15 feet from me, perched on the trunk of a stately elm. It hammered away and cocked its head here and there to peer into the holes it drilled. Not once did it sneeze.

Earlier, a young heron (Black-crowned) was gingerly stepping up the 40-degree incline of a branch protruding from the pond, working its way around a fat Red Slider turtle which emerged for a morning sunbath on an adjacent log. They couldn't have picked a better day to be out and about - a cool dry northern front has ushered out to sea days of hot humid weather, bringing bright skies to light a verdant landscape that our wet spring has created. The heron made a few stabs at fish, but seems to need a bit more practice judging from his empty beak in three tries.

As May came to an end, we had a visit from a young merganser female which showed up around the 27th -- almost a month after the last of its ilk, which visit over the winter, had departed. It paddled around for three days looking quite lonely, before disappearing, hopefully northward.

A great photographer wrote some years ago that edges are the where one can most quickly see and record drama; seacoasts, skylines, meadows against forests, day and night,etc. So it is in the seasons as we pass from spring to summer. The pattern of settled critters and an end to most migrant travel is upon us. But while the obvious drama may be less available, there will still be moments of wonder. Thus the birder keeps watch. As another great photographer once pointed out, the secret of making a great picture is "F8 and be there."

Karma! Just now mama Mallard has appeared with her new brood. Moving quickly across the pond from a spot I had suspected she was nesting, she is followed by a tightly packed squadron of puffballs, light brown in the morning light, with flecks of gold and black adorning them. Tethered by invisible bonds, the group stays close as they peck at tasty morsels in the yellow film which now is evident across much of the pond. Not a runny nose in the lot.

And, with good luck, they will avoid the attention of a large Snapping Turtle which I recently spotted  lurking in the creek at dawn. The great Mandala rolls on.
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