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Curtain Time on Hideaway Pond

A light overcast above Hideaway Pond today. Warm, for this time of year. The pond is a pool of reflections. A soft gray sky. And the wild cherries are blooming. Makes one feel like kicking back and letting Nature entertain. Curtain time.

It’s mid-week. The last two days were alive with mallards and wood ducks. Both days, two pairs of mallards splashed down during early morning. They dabbled around the edge of the pond, feeding on submerged vegetation. Spring’s gift to the water world. And to the winter starved grass carp. By mid-afternoon the mallards had hit the Birdbaun north. Didn’t even stop for a chat. The least one might expect for free snack of fresh green water shoots. Ingrates.

Not so, the wood ducks, 2 pairs of whom visited each day. Both pairs explored the pond, flew from tree to tree, strolled around the edge of the pond and into the woods. Aeronauts, aquanauts and terranauts, these little guys. Triple threats. We continue to hope that a pair will favor us by moving into the duck house we mounted on one of the pond side trees a few years ago. Woe unto us. They must not like the neighborhood.

We may have better luck with the bluebird house mounted to one of the front yard maples. A pair of house wrens was flirting with it this morning. She kept entering and exiting while he hung out in a tree. She might be measuring for curtains. We’ll see.

A chipmunk has made a home in a stack of logs in the back yard. It pokes its head in and out of various holes. A veritable condominium complex all to itself. Some chipmunks have all the luck. Seems to matter little that there’s no indoor plumbing.

And the bears should be visiting soon. By this time last year we had seen several. I’ve included a couple of photos from last year’s visitors.

Before we went to the porch this morning, my lovely bride spotted a pair of wood ducks from the kitchen window. They played in the trees until we reached the porch. They grazed around the edge of the pond for a while. They had settled down on the edge of the pond when a squirrel jumped out of the brush and frightened them to the back of the pond. And there they remain.

Darkness has falllen. And two more mallards have splashed down and swum to the island. There, they’ve climbed the bank and fallen asleep. It’s been a long hard flight.

So the curtain closes as another beautiful Catskill sunset fades to black. Silence.

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