I look out the window in the kitchen and what do I see?
I really woke up on this morning, when a passing glance out the window and across the cove revealed a small movement in the little cluster of tall, supple poplar trees, disappearing into the grove of bent and stunted hemlocks indigenous to these islands. I am alone on this no longer inhabited island in the north Atlantic and, for one thing, there should not be poplar trees. The islands are largely spruce and hemlock, with only an occasional deciduous tree: these foreign trees must have been planted by the first descendants of the first settlers a little over 100 years ago.
And, there should not be an unfamiliar movement in those trees. As I watch anxiously a largish black bird waddles out of the underbrush followed by a procession of small black creatures – ah! ducklings. Mama Duck (we must assume it was a mama) was headed straight for the water and in a long line, reminiscent of a kindergarten teacher leading her children to recess, the ducklings, a raggle-taggle crew in disheveled feathers, mostly black, but with a suggestion of yellow baby down below, straggle behind her in a more or less straight line. One by one they cross the sand and splash into the water, like kids on a water slide, and I know they will seldom be out of it again. Once in the water the little convoy makes directly across the cove toward the pooling water in front of our dock.
If you were to look at Middle Island from the air you would see a cookie with a big bite out of it on the western side: this is the Middle Island cove. We see no other houses, only sand and rock and other small islands. There is a sandy beach at the inside end of the cove but on either side the gray rock, of which these islands are composed, bends in as though about to hug the water and hold it safely in the cove. Our house is on the northwestern side, protected from the storms that bluster through from time to time. Here the small family of ducks stops their earnest paddling and, moving into an approximate circle formation, immediately begin to paddle gently, heads up at attention, but moving constantly, though slowly, in and out, around and around, a slow dance created by webbed feet. Another adult bird joins the small family and the two grown-ups devote themselves diligently to scanning the water, diving in place for small fish, and all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the youngsters. If one drifts away from the pack, the pack expands to include him or one of the big birds herds him back. Occasionally other adults, leading and herding small clutches of ducklings will join my young family and then drift on.
Over the next two or three weeks the kids and their mother will be my morning show, and my evening delight.
Over head the terns and seagulls are busy on their daily duty of patrolling the cove; the terns dipping low for a glimpse of something swimming, then swooping up, turning like lightning for a dive and splash!, straight down into the water, and straight up , sometimes with a fish wiggling in the beak: a constant dance of dips, dives, wheels and turns. The seagulls are more pragmatic, they fly low over the water looking for anything that moves: fish are OK but so also are small crustaceans and bits of flotsam – or jetson. I am talking here about thirty years ago. Now, with the depletion of the fisheries, fish, tide pool creatures; sea birds, and fisherfolk have all disappeared. Of the overhead birds, a small percentage of terns and seagulls remain. The poplars also still shiver in the wind to remind us of the fishermen and their wives who are also gone.
I am alone now, on an island where once ten different families lived, fished, - and planted poplar trees, as well as lilacs, apple trees, cabbages and potatoes. The first houses on this island were built by Irish and German immigrants in the 1860s. They are gone now, with the loss of the fisheries , but a few of the houses and many of the plants remain. Those settlers thought of a raft of black ducks as a feast. As one local fisherman’s wife told me, “Oh, yes, every fall my husband would bring in a brace of ducks. “Oh, my! They were good! I could eat a whole one all by myself!”
On this day the water is tranquil, an unruffled kindly blue; the number of senior ducks is increasing, as single males and immatures join the Mamas, and the youngsters are getting more adventurous. Occasionally one will slide out from under the parental eye, embarking on an exploratory trip across the cove but an alert adult will herd him – or her, back to the home pool. When an enemy appears, usually a seagull, the adults rise up in the water in fear and outrage, flapping their wings with great bursts of sound, splashing water, honking, flapping, dripping wet and carrying on until the menace disappears. On this morning , about three weeks after I watched the ducklings slipping from land to water as easily as kids on a water slide I was loading the wood stove and turned, when I heard an uproar, to see a seagull flying off, triumphant, with a duckling squawking in his claws. Poplars, houses, fish nothing is immune to change.
-- Heidi Watts, April 2024
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