Today I spent the afternoon wandering a beaver pond in my bare feet. The
sun on my back and mud squishing between my toes brought back my childhood.
The water boatman, aquatic insects that have a pair of long, oar-like legs,
went on short flights. They would spring out of the water and fly maybe 6
feet in the air, then suddenly drop, as if overcome by their aerial
excursions, and fall into the water with a audible kurplunk. A pair of red
tails flirt in the air above, winding sinuously back and forth in front of
each other like hawks in love do. As I approached the far side of the pond,
a pair of mallards motored out of a tangle of cattail and the female started
nervously muttering. Not wishing to disrupt the domestic tranquility I
decided to return back to my shoes. I had seen a whole bunch of the
baseball-sized egg masses of Northwestern Salamanders so I decided to count
them on the return. I had just counted number 28 when everything changed.
It had been a quiet, still afternoon, with pretty much only the wind in the
trees, the kurplunk of the boatmen and an occasional echo of a Pacific wren
from the forest behind me. There was a familiar chatter and I looked up as
the Swallows arrived at that very minute. The air was suddenly full and
alive with chatter and soaring birds. I looked at my watch and they arrived
precisely at 3pm. They wasted no time and zoomed and careened over the pond
scarfing up the many emerging insects. Suddenly the frog chorus started up
and then a pair of Hutton's vireos started to Churleee back and forth across
the pond. Even the Red-winged blackbirds kicked in. The change, from quiet
to full spring orchestra was sudden and dramatic, like I was in a nature
movie and the director just cued the soundtrack. As I was putting my shoes
back on, there was a scrum of 6 hawkish birds way in the sky, and laying on
my back in my bins they resolved into a pair of Eagles, A pair of red-tails
and a pair of Osprey. The Eagles were both diving at the other birds and
quickly gained air control over the pond where they then soared around and
around higher and higher until they finally drifted out of view to the
north, just tiny dots in the great blue sky. Nothing like a sunny spring
day to get a nature geeks juices flowing

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
Snohomish County