Category Archives: Harlequin Ducks

Group Dynamics

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It snowed last night, which seems to have disturbed the gulls. Thirty or forty of the normally noisy birds float quietly along the newly whitened beach. Some stand on the snow mounds that have formed on offshore rocks. As usual, Aki ignores the big birds. But oddly, the birds appear to be ignoring me. They don’t flinch when the trail brings me within ten feet of them.

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The snow won’t last, I tell the gulls. I am not lying. The temperature is already rising; snowmelt dropped on us when we walked in the forest. The gulls continue to ignore us so we move on to a portion of the bay favored by my favorite guys—the harlequin ducks.

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Diving ducks, the harlequins aren’t bother by the new snow. They must be on top of a school of baitfish. More than once a parti-colored male chases off another duck and then dives under the water. Six of the ducks breaks off from the larger raft and work like a synchronized swim team. One duck diving is a beautiful thing. Six diving together, well, it’s six times better. One second there are six ducks swimming in formation. The next, just disturbed water. A few seconds later, the six are back.

Out of Concern

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Aki won’t leave the car. For the first time ever at a trailhead, she doesn’t leap out the door the minute I open it. A light rain is falling but in the past even heavy downpours haven’t deterred her. As if trained in etiquette by an Irishman, she waits for me to ask her three timed before dropping onto the ground.

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The little dog stays right on my heals as we cross the Fish Creek Bridge and head toward the pond. She looks back often, even when squatting to defecate. She has smelled a wild animal that might harm us. I know it is not a bear because, unwisely, she has no fear of them. I remember the wolf that hunted here during the salmon spawn. Maybe it is back. Aki calms down after we round the pond.

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Even through the tide has covered over the wetlands, which would normally force all the eagles to roost in shoreline spruce trees, none of the big birds announces our approach with screams. We won’t see any eagles, ravens, or crows during the visit. The resident mallards are also gone. A pair of western grebes fish just offshore in Fritz Cove. Behind them a line of harlequin and golden eye ducks fly feet off of the water. Across the horizon, hundreds of migratory birds head south, too far away for me to identify them.

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Aki perks up when we turn to head back to car, but stops often to make sure that I am not lagging behind. I feel like a child being escorted down a dangerous city street. We drive home through a downpour, which discourages me from exiting the car when we reach the house. Aki waits for me on the front porch even though the door is already open. She will wait there until I gather everything from the car and walk into the safety of our home.

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Auk Village

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Aki ignores the murder of crows gathered on the Auk Nu beach. Rather than reacting to us, the crows play a bouncing game. For no apparent reason, one flies ninety degrees up then drops like a rock onto the beach. Next two birds bounce up and down. A third bird tries it. When an eagle swoops over them the crows fly in a low arc over the water and return to the beach. Are crows and ravens the only birds with spare time to kill?

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The other birds we pass are either hunting, eating, or resting. Scoters and harlequin ducks dive on food in the bay. A sea lion rolls once on the surface and slips under the water to chase a fish. One bald eagle surveys the bay from a spruce roost after temporarily flushing the crows.

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The little dog and I leave the beach for a forest trail that leads to Point Louisa. It takes us between lines of yellowing blueberry bushes to a spit where we can see the old village site. From this spot 100 years ago, we could have seen smoke climbing from the roofs hand-hewn long houses. Big canoes, dug out from single spruce or cedar logs would have littered the beach. A canoe full of Auk Tlingits chased a boat of British sailors back to Lt. Vancouver’s brig. A canoe from Wrangell carried John Muir here.

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The canoes and long houses are gone. One totem pole survives to stand over a village site of dogwood, thimbleberry and fireweed gone to seed.

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It has to happen

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We are heading into the brown time that falls between fall color and snow. Aki, we have watched most of the leaves in this forest mature from spring buds to limp, drained things. The little dog, acting as if she didn’t hear me, slinks off to sniff a tree trunk. Poodle, I know it is ridiculous to mourn the leaves. She flashes me her “duh’ look.

Maybe because this has been such a good year for fall color, I am saddened by single leaves, now faded from red to pink, hanging from otherwise empty trees. If the time of snow and hard freezes holds off for a week or two more, we will have more color in the forest. Some of the low growing sorrels are still green while the leaves of their neighbors are mottled red and orange. But the wind has torn the yellow leaves off most of the cottonwoods and the alders are fading to brown.

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Soon we will be reduced to earth tones except for the party colors of the harlequin ducks.

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Working Birds

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As rain soaks into Aki’s fur, a belted kingfisher pluck a baitfish from the water and then lands on a rock in the tidal zone. It flips, chomps, and swallows the fish and settles in atop the rock. Plumped up and with its feathers slick and wet, the kingfisher reminds me of the banker icon from Monopoly, With my rain smeared glasses I can’t see whether the bird is sporting a monocle.

The little poodle-mix and I are the only one using the Rainforest trail this morning. Aki is a good sport about the rain, as usual. But she appears to be in a hurry to get back under the old growth canopy.

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I’d follow her off the beach now if not for the line of harlequin ducks cruising through the trough line of a swell. When they are not hidden by a wave, I can see that the little party-colored ducks swim with heads buried in the water. Closer in, gulls appear to be standing on the ocean’s surface. The incoming tide will soon force them off their already submerged perches. But for now, they are quite content to rest on their rocks.

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They Are Back

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The birds are back little dog. Looking up from a scent spot that has occupied her attention for the last minute, Aki gives me a “Dah” look. She might think I am referring to the adult bald eagle that had been feeding a few feet away when we reached the Shaman Island beach. The big bird flew off to a glacier erratic on the other side of Peterson Creek and landed. From that vantage point and safe from poodles, it waits for us to leave so it can return to its feast.

No Aki, I am not referring to that eagle or the other one roosting nearby. Look there. I point toward the island where a small raft of harlequin ducks are performing the synchronized swimming routine their kind performs when feeding. All summer the harlequins have been hanging out on the outer coast with red-breasted mergansers and the other fish ducks. The little bay has been lonely in their absence. It’s good to have them back. Closer to the beach, a smaller raft of widgeons have their heads in the water feeding. These guys must be heading south.

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We passed other signs of fall along the forest trail that we used to get to this beach. The leaves of wild crabapple trees and blueberry bushes were in high autumn colors. Some of the devil’s club and skunk cabbage were yellowing. And the downy woodpeckers that seem to only appear at the change of seasons, were hammering away at old growth spruce and hemlock trees.

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Enriched by Light

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Sunshine enriches this visit to an old growth forest. It backlights the translucent flesh of plant leaves and throws strong shadows off hunting dragonflies.

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But I wonder if Aki cares. Sunlight reflecting off the beaver pond forces her to squint and, I think, sometimes to sneeze. As long as her little nose works, she doesn’t care if the sun shines.

The little dog and I walk along through the forest to a small bay. Soon the bay will fill up with waterfowl making their annual trip south. They will be joined by harlequin docks fat with baitfish from the stormy outer coast. Local mallards will share the bay with them and a few resident eagles. Today a few crows croak from a rocky island in the bay. Gulls, full from feeding during the ebb tide, putter around the same island or rest on the Shaman Island spit. I hear but do not see an eagle. Its high-pitched scream sounds like a piglet’s squeal.

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Dive or Dance

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Three harlequin ducks shared a near shore rock, each bending over as if to preach to the rest of their raft as they floated in the water. No bird attended to the sermon of a crow standing alone on another rock. Then, as if conducting an ordered evacuation, the three ducks dove one after the other into the water. Without the little dog or I knowing it, two bald eagles had been watching the harlequin performance from high in the spruce tree behind us.

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After screeching out a critique, the eagles flew over our heads and glided over the ducks. If the eagles were planning on diving on the ducks, they soon gave up on the idea. Instead they started what appeared to be a game of tag. One eagle closed on the other. When a collision seemed imminent, the two birds sailed apart. They continued the dance over the ducks for a minute and then flew off in different directions.

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