Common Birds XIII - Hooded Merganser

The morning feels quiet. I think it’s because, according to birds, I walk later and later everyday. It is always 9:15, but each day that time gets further from dawn, the time when birds are their most active. The fixed cycles of human work hours don’t always intersect with the more fluid schedules of animals and sun. I still hear the sound of blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds, but their songs and cries sound distant. This feels fitting. Today is Monday of Holy Week, a time of both solemnity and the expectation of joy. 

Walking toward the stream, a chickadee is somewhere overhead, lost in the brilliant sun, singing dee-too, dee-too. Calls feel like the day to day business of foraging and warning. Songs speak to me of contentment. This chickadee is not worried about me or where it will find its food, so it lifts and lifts its simple, two note song.

On the way to the trailhead, I see four or five robins feeding at the various edges of soil and parking lot. The sky is clear and blue. Sunlight begins to melt the slightly frozen mud at the trailhead. The pond is also quiet, though now I more clearly hear the voice of the red-winged blackbird above the cattail marsh. Across the water, I spot two female hooded mergansers, silently swimming to put more distance between themselves and me. I’m surprised and delighted to see them. Spring is coming quickly, and I expected the hooded mergansers to be on their way to northern Canada. Though, maybe they are and this is just a stop over.

Now living near the ocean, I have the privilege to give my attention to the duck migration. I knew there were ducks other than mallard ducks, but this winter I’ve been able to see over a dozen species: mallards, hooded mergansers, common mergansers, common goldeneyes, northern pintails, buffleheads, ring necked ducks, gadwalls, American black ducks, long tailed ducks, surf scooters, black scooters, and white winged scooters. I had no idea that life had created so many! This particular, some (my wife) might say obsessive, attention reminds me that I have an affinity for cycles and repetition. That is likely obvious from my recording of the same walk everyday, but it’s harder to see those things in ourselves. I only really noticed when my friends played Stardew Valley, a farming video game, dramatically differently than I did. I had a regular pattern of crop and animal tending which I did everyday. They did whatever they wanted. So I realized that cycles of repeated behavior is not how the game is played, those cycles are what I want. 

Here, at the pond watching these hooded mergansers catch fish after fish on the Monday of Holy Week, I am aware of a great confluence of various levels of cycles. For me, this is the normal walk I do everyday in order to see the world that lives in my parking lot. For the mergansers, this is part of their trip back to where they were born and where they will bear ducklings before returning again in the autumn. For the moon, it is waxing towards fullness. For the sun, it has just passed its equilibrium. For the church calendar, this intersection of full moon and spring equinox marks out the day of Easter. For me, doing Morning Prayer through the church year drew me deeply into the Episcopal church when I joined six years ago. This morning I prayed in contemplation over and over around my prayer beads, For God alone my soul in silence waits, from him comes my salvation. For the world, it waits with eager longing for the revealing of this salvation. 

And I project myself into the past, imagining what it would have been like to be a proto-scientist. What would become science started with careful study of, attention to, and participation in these cycles. I can imagine myself waking early to mark the position of the sunrise and waiting to watch the procession of the moving stars. Even today, I watch and record and map the activity and presence of birds over the seasons. I wish we could reclaim this methodology which seemed to draw no boundaries between witness and worship. I, a modern scientist, feel my research question pulled inexorably towards exploiting the universe and our knowledge of it rather than exploring and standing in awe. 

And I can reclaim it, even in small ways, standing by a small pond watching two hooded mergansers for a time before I leave for work and they leave for a season. Like most female ducks, they are a uniform brown. Their hoods look prickly and slicked back from their foreheads, like they’re spiky haired punks who suddenly find themselves in a business meeting. They sit low in the water, occasionally rearing and pushing back their shoulders, and frequently diving to catch small fish with ease. When they dive, the feet and tail come clear out of the water, throwing off drops of water which catch the golden light.