The sky was gray and everything was wet but the rain appeared to be over. The water was calm and the air quiet. Carolina wrens, juncos, and white throated sparrows were breakfast guests. I startled a pileated woodpecker when I came back from the kitchen. Later a downy woodpecker ignored me as it ate suet.
Red breasted and hooded mergansers plied the creek waters. I saw butterbutts flitting through the wet branches. That made me notice that the volunteer peach was blooming. Wood ducks prospected for nesting sites along the lake. The tide was very high at noon almost a week past full moon.
Afternoon could not have been more different - sunny, windy, and colder. The lake was full of activity. Shovelers were pinwheeling to stir up food from the bottom. Three cormorants basked on a log. One turtle had ventured out onto a different log. The wood ducks were still around as was a dark duck I couldn't identify. Even a goose passed through the jumble of snags. Down on the creek it was all about gulls and mergansers. The gulls fought over their catch.
Toward evening, songbirds flitted through the branches, but they were silhouettes against the sky and I couldn't identify them. A couple of female red breasted mergansers splashed and dived together in one spot for a long time. I could not figure out if they were bathing or fishing or what. A sizable flock of mergansers collected downstream from the neighbor's dock. Puffy clouds took color from the sunset,
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