Turkey Day

It’s been difficult to keep up with things going on around the pond lately. It’s the season when everything and everybody seem to happen at the same time. Even the fish are shaking their lethargy. The grass carp are beginning to patrol the edges of the pond in anticipation of that first piquant nibble of spring grass. Wood ducks and mallards have been frequent visitors on their way south to warmer weather and larger families. At least one pair of mallards has shown up each day for the past week and four big tom turkeys dropped in last night. A small herd of 4 deer seems to have adopted us. I suppose we’ll soon be godparents, its being the time of year when the does drop their fawns. During the past, does have occasionally hidden their newborn fawns in or near our rock garden while they went foraging. Today’s big treat was a flock of about 20 turkeys that grazed their way through the front yard and on into the woods. The geese are still hanging around, but are showing their faces less and less frequently. Which bodes ill because that probably means that they’re settling into a nest somewhere at the back of the pond. Mom goose is doing the characteristic prenatal goose routine of settling on her belly in the front yard and ripping off any blade of grass that has the temerity to wander within her neck range. The stink bugs, though they’re waging a vigorous rear guard action, seem to be on the wane and with them my suspicion that they must be the NY State bird. May the gods of entymology forever ban their odoriferous little bodies forever from our threshold. At least until next November.