mid-September morn

I was down at the pond and marsh shortly after sunrise this morning. It was a somewhat cool cloudless blue-sky Sunday morning with almost no wind and an astonishing lack of sound. No bugs, no boats, no birds. The sky, the marsh and the woods beyond seemed etched in a silence that put everything in sharp relief for what seemed like a long period of time. Finally there was the distant sound of corvids -- crows and jays.

A Black-crowned Night-Heron jumped out of the marsh and landed near the top of one of the high leafy trees in the woods . . . but still silently. Suddenly birds began popping up everywhere along the edge of the marsh and in the higher vegetation -- live and Sandy-dead -- just beyond. The most surprising of these was a richly colored off-season Bobolink with a pink bill (a notable feature not often mentioned) and a striking orange-buff color, deepest around the face. No sound but easy to pick out as it crouched in the tangled dead branches of a toppled Red Cedar.

What else? Red-eyed Vireo and Ovenbird in the big Tupelo at the head of the marsh and many of the familiars of early fall: finches (American Gold- and House), woodpeckers (all four local species), lots of American Robins (including juveniles), Cedar Waxwings, Common Yellowthroat, White-breasted Nuthatch, etc.

A sprawled-out deer in the near woods -- thought to be a dead animal -- was presumably only resting as it later disappeared or melted into a gang of seven or eight, a mixture of roe deer and their fawns seen a bit later in the day.

Eric Salzman