Not a flake of snow. Not a trace of fresh new white stuff. Disappointing for this first-year snowshoer. Another dry, mild day—a sky of partly blue, partly gray. Chickadees were active first thing. Playful, flirtatious, randy. I watched them for a while from the deck.

But the big news today is that I got a pair of these yesterday—and would be trying them out for the first time. I can’t seem to get out of the office before 4 p.m., damn it—though I did rush out briefly about midday to take care of some errands and tick the usual town birds off my list (herring gull, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon). By the time I started for the breakwater, the air hung still, the temperature had bumped up into the 40s (F), and the brimming tide had began to fall.

First sighting: a group of common eiders mingling with herring gulls near the harbor shore. In the little cove beyond the breakwater’s base, a gaggle of red-breasted mergansers with their punk hair-dos argued and splashed. In a calm patch beyond the tidal rocks, a raft of black ducks—along with a couple mallards—floated calmly; beyond them, a little group of common goldeneyes.

Then I saw the harbor seal. The seal had reared from the water’s surface and looked to be mounting something. A tidal rock? Another seal? After a few minutes, it turned out to be a rock just about even with the water’s surface—but the seal kept slipping off. It would swim up again and begin flopping around on its blubbery sides, apparently trying for a good balance. I like how the seals lounge there with their heads and hind flippers raised, looking at a distance like a sort of disembodied smile.

And then I saw the grebe. A horned grebe, in approximately the same place I saw one a couple days ago—possibly the same bird. Just a slight, solitary diving creature with a little lump of a body and a long, thin neck. Reflected, it looked sort of like an andiron. I stopped to watch the grebe a while.

The length of the breakwater I walked swiftly. Not a lot to see out there—oh, a couple of loons, some gulls in flight, a great cormorant in the waves. A breeze had picked up, but it didn’t feel too uncomfortable. And my new binoculars are, well, awesome. And I didn’t even have to pay $1,000 to $2,000 for ’em. (I’m saving up for one of these.) On the return trip, the sun passed beyond the horizon over Rockland, and in the opposite direction the bay and sky turned pink and purple and calm. A seal lay on a rock. A small flotilla of mergansers splashed and skirmished. The day died calmly, beautifully, quietly. And for the first I heard the voice of the horned grebe.

It was riveting. High, thin, with a slight waver. Brief. It reminded me of what might’ve been the whinny of a tiny horse. Wholly unexpected. Truly mesmerizing.

Tonight I read up on grebes a while. I’ve seen several species. Pied-billed grebes used to frequent a quarry pond I owned. Eared grebes tend to stick to the western part of the continent, and horned grebes—and wear their fancy nesting plumage—far to the north of here. They tend to float silently in winter. I wonder why this particular bird decided to call—three, four times, at least—when I saw no other member of its species there to hear.

(Did you know a group of grebes is known as a “water dance.”)

Today’s List

Black-capped chickadee
American crow
Herring gull
Rock pigeon
Ring-billed gull
Common eider
Great black-backed gull
Red-breasted merganser
Common goldeneye
Black duck
Mallard
Horned grebe
Common loon
Great cormorant
Bufflehead

Tags: American crow, black duck, black-capped chickadee, bufflehead, common eider, common goldeneye, common loon, great black-backed gull, great cormorant, herring gull, horned grebe, mallard, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Lists, Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.