they're back!

Now that we’ve switched from daylight savings time to standard, the early dark evenings really underline the fact summer’s over, as does the nip in the air, the leaves turning yellow, russet and flame, and the return of our birds!

I know birds are supposed to leave for the south in fall. But here they (the water birds at least) break the rules.

All summer long in the places we walk - along the Nicomekl River from Elgin Park to the Nico Wynd Golf Course dikes, along the Serpentine at Ducks Unlimited and beside all its ponds and fens, along the ocean at Blackie’s Spit, Crescent Beach, and Mud Bay Park - it’s been deserted except for gulls, the odd pair of mallards and a few herons. But in the last few weeks, our favorites have started coming back.

First we noticed a couple of loons. Then we saw the odd cormorant - not yet as plentiful as they will be later in the season - when they bob about fishing, and then stand by the dozens on buoys and rotten pilings with wings spread wide, hanging them out to dry.

Another day we spotted a couple of coots - those odd-looking black birds that swim, not smoothly like ducks and geese, but jerking their heads the whole time. That same day, we took note of our first pair of widgeons - for the season which really proves how duck-starved we were because later, we don’t give them second look.

On a walk along the drainage creek across from the community gardens at Blackie’s Spit a few days later, we saw our first pintails of the season - ducks with the most elegant necks.

Then Monday, I saw my favorites - the mergansers. A couple of hooded merganser pairs were swimming in one of the Ducks Unlimited ponds. What a funky hairdo the female has - right in tousled style and without gel too! How suave the male looks, with his black-and-white coif. What wonderful and exotic company for the dullest time of the year!