Geese are on the move

Yesterday was a crystal blue day.  I was lucky to be visiting friends on the bay side, and as we talked, I watched threads of dark geese moving on the distant water.  Thin lines would lift and float, break up and return to the water in smaller groups.  Some would fly higher, black pencil sketches against the blue water and far green shore.  Ragged groups would fly, dip, fly.  Restless, readying for the flight  back north to breed.  These are Brant, dapper little sea geese that are rarely found inland.  They feed on aquatic plants found in the near-inland waters and avoid the shore.
They seem sensitive to disturbance on land and rest in huge floating rafts out in the bay.  In May, the last of the migrants will leave us for their breeding ground, as far north as the islands off Alaska.
But for the time being,  they are a beautiful sight and sound on the water for us land bound beings to enjoy.
Farther south, other geese are moving.  At Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in far southeastern Oregon and a Disneyland for birding, the Ross's geese and Snow geese are massing.  In the flat distance, they look like snow fields, vast white, undulating masses of them.  But you know they're full of life when you open your car window and hear them.  There is no way to describe the beauty of their undulating, yelping call that's carried on the chill breeze off Steen's Mountain.  Thousands of them, all talking at once, and below this call,  a soft vibration comes to the ear.  A humming from the flock that is mesmerizing.  And if you're lucky and a huge flock decides to move while you're watching, it's  heart stopping.  The call increases in intensity and seems to go up in pitch, and is definitely louder and louder, as they begin to move about, stretch wings, and then up they go, rising in a white, shimmering mass, calling and winging into the sky. An exultatation of geese.  There's just nothing like it.  In fact, a Finnish composer of classical music, after witnessing such a movement, wrote a symphony, including this bird song.  If you play that music and witness a fly-off, well it's just over the top.
It's fun to search the flocks of Ross's and Snow geese for what are called 'blue-morphs'.  These are rare to unusual individuals that are dark blue to grey in color, commonly called blue geese.   You'd think they would stick out in the crowd, but they can be pretty hard to spot.
Looking out my window at home, I see the Canada goose pair across the water.  The male, now quite hormonal and guarding the female very closely, and the female, mostly just loafing around and grazing.  I wonder if she will nest this year.
 In some parts of the country Canada geese are considered pests.  Like starlings.  I appreciate the damage they can do, but watching these two, representative of the family Branta, I have to wish them well.

A Mallard Emergency

I should have noticed sooner. All afternoon, a sunny break in the rainy weather, I had worked in the side yard.  I have a native plant garden that stretches from near the house to very near the pond.  Because it's damp and shady, lots of northwest natives like it there.  I have a huckleberry, several kinds of ferns, and just last week, one of two trilliums that I successfully transplanted showed two luminous white blooms.  Trilliums like deep shade, and this one is happy under the alder, where the white faces of the flowers seem to float in the cool dark.  By the way, I bought the trilliums from a native plant nursery - it's not nice to steal from Mother Nature. So anyway, working away, I was happily oblivious to the drama unfolding not fifty feet away.

I had noticed a mallard drake swimming close to shore, but if I drifted near, he would paddle away, watching me over his shoulder.  Something should have clued me, as he kept returning, and he was alone.  Right now, we have two consistent pairs of mallards in the yard.  The males keep a baleful eye on each other, lowering their heads and chasing if one trespasses some unseen boundary, too close to the other hen.  If one does catch the other, solid bites to the tail bring home the no-trespassing message.
Our pond/stream edge was bounded by a previous owner in cedar poles.  They're sunk in the shoreline so that only about eight to ten inches remain above water.  They're like a gap-tooth smile, with lots of spaces and crooks where the ducks can climb onshore.  But some of the crooks form a kind of half circle, and in one of these, a mallard hen had been trapped.
I finally saw her when I walked to the water's edge, just to enjoy the day.  Early bees were humming and the violet-green swallows were swooping and chittering above, catching bugs and checking out the nest boxes on the shoreline.  The hen was terrified.  She had stayed quiet in order to not be discovered by the human and now that I saw her, panic ensued.  She struggled mightily to get loose, but she had evidently flown into this small space, and now she couldn't open her wings to fly free.  Her eyes were huge and she was panting.  She was convinced the end was near.  I don't think there's anything more terrifying to wild things than being trapped and approached.
I spoke quietly to her, which didn't seem to impress her one bit.  From handling birds and critters in wildlife rehab, I knew that gentle and smooth was going to work best.  Minimize the trauma.  I stooped and gathered her, holding her wings to her body, and pulled her up from her trap.  Ducks really can't hurt you.  The toe claws can give a good scrape, so they're good to avoid.  And most wild things will poop when picked up, just out of panic.  So it's good to hold them away from your jeans and shoes.
I couldn't resist admiring her.  Mallard hens look pretty drab from a distance, but up close, those browns, beiges and duns are just beautiful.  Every feather perfectly crafted and finished with delicate stippling, dots and stripes. 
But she was panting and wild-eyed.  So after checking her for any skin breaks or bad scrapes, I turned her toward the water and gave her a gentle toss.  She flew, quacking loudly, to the middle of the pond where her anxious mate met her.  He circled her, head lowered, speaking softly.   She spent a good fifteen minutes carefully grooming away any trace of her entrapment, then the couple drifted downstream to spend a quiet afternoon in the sun.
I put a big rock in the area where she was trapped so that it wouldn't happen again.  If I hadn't seen her, she could have starved there.
Back to trimming and cleaning the garden, listening to the assorted calls and songs of the ducks, redwings, goldfinches and swallows.  Nothing can beat it.