Most of the puddle duck males have finished breeding by now and are busy working on another big task: getting rid of their conspicuously bright plumage. Earlier in the year, they needed their gaudiest getups in order to attract a female, but now that mating season is over, the males would like to blend into the background a lot more and lower their risk of being eaten by predators. So they are molting as fast as they can into a camouflage plumage called “eclipse.” Not everybody molts on the same schedule, though. You can still catch a few males looking spiffy. In particular, one quite lovely Cinnamon Teal male has been hanging out on Southwest Pond lately. He likes to nap on a tussock of grass and mud on the southwest edge of the pond.

Here is a poem for you today:

I dream.
I dream of harmony between me and mine.
The song sublime.
And all of humanity is mine.
And all of nature too.

The Washington Department of Transportation has committed to mitigate the damage that will occur when the new 520 bridge is built in the Foster Island area. Part of the mitigation will be to convert the Dime Lot at Montlake Fill (also known as E-5) into a wetland. This will add something like 20 acres of new wetland to the Fill, a substantial increase to the 75-acre site. Wowza. Back in April, the UW closed off Douglas Road, the gravel road leading into the Dime Lot. Work is scheduled to begin in July. In the meantime, the birds have already taken back Douglas Road and the parking lot. If you are quiet and slow, you can enter this brave new world and share it with the wild birds who live here, most notably, a family of Killdeers: mom and dad and chicks who look like puffballs on stilts. Here is a poem for you today:

They closed the road in April
to build a wetland someday,
but a Killdeer came
to scrape her nest,
lay four eggs.
Now babies own that road.