Western Scrub-Jay with acorn (© Gregg Thompson)

In a famous Homer Simpson episode, three of Homer’s co-workers observe him golluping his food at his workstation. One observer says, “God, he eats like a pig.”

Lenny, the loyal but precise friend, replies, “I don’t know. Pigs tend to chew. I’d say he eats more like a duck.”

I have often observed ducks eating at the Fill, and indeed they do gollup their food. So do many other birds. Without any teeth, they have little choice, I suppose. Herons, grebes, gulls, robins — all down their food whole in great gulps.

Not scrub-jays, though. The Western Scrub-jays of the Fill must belong to the upper crust of the avi-kingdom when it comes to fine dining. They have manners. I know because I was privileged to watch one scion yesterday at the Fill who brought an acorn to table.

It must have been a nut cached some six months ago. In the fall, I saw all the scrub-jays busily harvesting acorns from the oak trees scattered throughout the neighborhood. They would take each acorn to a selected place in a lawn or nearby field, place it in the larder so to speak, and cover it up with a leaf. At the time I thought this was pretty stupid. After all, squirrels, rodents, raccoons, and other birds are always on the lookout for an easy meal. What’s to stop them from sniffing out such an ill-hidden cache?

Nevertheless, the scrub-jays are now reaping the rewards. Every day, they unearth a deposit from their nutty caches, fly to a convenient bush, and commence dining. It is a delicate procedure. They begin by carefully wrapping their claws around the acorn. Then they peck precisely at the hull, splitting it in two and creating Acorn on the Half-Shell. They proceed to strip off the rest of the hull, and then they nip off bites of nut. Each bite is fashionably tiny, as though they were politely breaking off a little bit of cucumber sandwich at an English tea.

Between bites, my particular jay exchanged remarks with another jay at the next table…er, I mean bush. The two of them took their time to eat, just as fashionable diners do in the finest restaurants. When at last it had finished, “my” jay wiped its beak fastidiously on a twig and then cast an inquiring look at me. I had been standing dumbly there the whole time, like a waiter ready to bring the next course. My mother would have said I was rude to stare so openly. Perhaps the jay agreed, for when it finally flew off, I did not receive a tip.

The Fill has been very cold and a little snowy lately, but the snow has been more of a dusting than a real blanket. Still, we’re definitely experiencing winter storms, despite the fact that the crocuses are up, the pussy willows are out, and the Red-winged Blackbirds have already decided which tiny patch of cattails will be their version of a Cadillac and a “Hey baby, hey baby, hey baby.”

I have been feeling disgruntled. Where is spring? Where is even the steady day-by-day progression towards spring!?

I set my campstool down at Main Pond the other day and decided I would sit there until spring arrived. It wasn’t altogether by intent. By the time I had moved glacially as far as Main Pond, I was frozen pretty solid. Sitting down was difficult; getting up again seemed impossible. I was sure the joggers going by would be glad to drop off a cookie or two now and then, so I would be fine for another month at least. Surely spring would be here in a month.

Main Pond was clear of ice, and a few Green-winged Teals and American Wigeons were tucked up under the willows. I couldn’t see the Common Teal who has been visiting from Siberia all winter, but he had been on the pond the day before, so I’m sure he’s still hanging out here. The sky turned a leaden gray, that brooding color that signals more snow is about to fall. I sighed. Oh for a bit of sun.

Just when I was feeling sorriest for myself, out from under the trees sailed two Northern Pintail drakes in full breeding plumage. They glided across the pond without any visible sign of movement, as though they had only to wish to be somewhere and there they would be. Their reflections glowed in the still water. The sun broke through the heavy clouds briefly, enough to silver the world with light. Every detail of every feather on those ducks stood out in the clear air.

Northern Pintail drake on Main Pond © Doug Parrott.

Say what you will about winter, a cold north wind brings with it a purity unlike any other. It blows away the city sounds, allowing nature to speak in quiet tones: the little crackle of a brown cottonwood leaf hitting the snow, the clack of bare branches waving in the breeze, the creak of coots as they talk amongst themselves on the pond. I sprang up, eager to see what else the Fill had to offer on this day. Gloomy weather? Not at all. Winter is a season with its own beauty, as glorious in its way as spring could ever be.

Although they are known for their raucous willingness to tell off the whole world in no uncertain terms, Steller’s Jays have their gentler, more reserved side. As a matter of fact, these flamboyant blue and black-crested jays have an almost Victorian sense of modesty, at least when it comes to bathing.

The Victorians, you may recall, believed that people should expose almost no skin in public beyond their faces, necks, and hands. Ankle-showing was strictly taboo, not to mention exposing anything higher up the ladder, so to speak. People in Victorian times did not even have legs. At best, they had limbs, and then only covered ones.

Yet the Victorians recognized that people needed to get some exercise, and swimming was very good exercise indeed. So at seaside resorts, the beaches would be lined with bathing machines for rent. The bathing machines looked like gypsy wagons, with horses in the front and stairs in the back. A customer would enter the wagon fully clothed and change into a bathing costume in the dark. Then the covered wagon would be backed down the beach until its steps were in the sea, at which point, the suitably costumed client would open the back door, climb down the steps, and enter the water. By the time anyone on shore could see the bather, he or she was already waist-deep in the ocean.

Yesterday at Yesler Cove, I inadvertently witnessed the Steller’s Jays’ version of a bathing machine. I was sitting on my camp stool on the edge of the cove, drinking in the serenity of a pond hidden from the city, protected from the winds, and completely screened from public view.  The only other living things around me were the inhabitants of Yesler Swamp:  A Great Blue Heron stood on a log across the way, still as a statue. A couple of Mallards dabbled in the mirror waters, and a few early-spring frogs peeped in the warmth of the sun. Deeper in the swamp, I could hear a few jays scolding, but I didn’t pay any attention because jays in the swamp always seem to be scolding someone.

Then, right over my head, passed a comet of blue and black feathers. It was a Steller’s Jay gliding in to perch on a dead branch on the far shore. He was soon joined by another jay and then another. The jays kept coming in a steady stream, like an invisible conveyor belt delivering finished jays to the shore. The birds were all congregating above a pool screened by numerous bare branches that dipped down into the water. One by one, they entered the pool and began to splash about. I counted up to eight at a time in the bathing area.

I froze, knowing if they became aware of me, they would all leave—irritated and scolding, no doubt. For half an hour, the birds took turns bathing in their secluded pool. Some of the jays flapped their wings energetically, throwing up exuberant streams of water. Others soaked themselves more sedately, patting the water with their wings and surely not washing behind their ears.

When they were done, the Steller’s Jays flew up into the high branches, where the sun could make the water drops glisten and eventually evaporate. There they perched, like living sapphires, as I breathed a quiet “oh” for such beauty in the world.

February’s sun is a pale and puny thing. On cloudless mornings when the cold creeps in, the sun can barely chin itself above the Cascade foothills. Even when it finally shines on the frost-silvered grass, it is too weak to melt the ice.

On mornings when clouds blanket the earth, the sun is no stronger. You can see it try to dissolve the shrouding gray, but at best it can clear away only a hazy hole in the clouds, peering through like a rheumy eye.

Yet I and the birds rejoice at the arrival of the February sun for, as feebly as its rays stroke the brown grass, it brings the first signs of spring. The eagles know this and have begun to dance together in the sky. Yesterday they met above Union Bay, circled each other once, and then flew together, one atop the other. So closely did they fly that their wing beats had to synchronize perfectly, else they would have crashed. Then they separated and flew side by side, the tips of their wings caressing each other briefly.

Meanwhile, the Red-winged Blackbird males have begun singing their bagpipe songs, staking out their own little territories among the cattails. They know the females choose mates based on the quality of the males’ property, and each male wants to claim the best lot on the block. The air is full of their challenges, as they swell up and then let fly with a raucous song.  Then they leap into the air, flashing their orange-red epaulets as if to say to rivals, “Take a look at these, Bub. Yeah, who’s bad?”

The Green-winged Teals are fighting too, if you can call it that. The males lift their little tufts on the backs of their heads, like jousters adjusting their helmets, and then they paddle toward each other. But they always stop short of making contact. Instead they puff up their tiny chests and peep. There were five having this kind of knock-down, drag-out fight on the Lagoon yesterday. They were all trying to impress a lone female, who, if she had had nails to polish, would have been buffing them in supreme indifference.

But the males were not discouraged. The earth has begun its ponderous tilt, leaning the northern climes back into the full force of the sun once again. Spring is coming, and soon it will be time to make more ducks. And more eagles. And more blackbirds.

Snowberries are the cauliflower of the avian menu: edible, yes—even nutritious. But hardly the go-to entrée when a chef is looking to upgrade the restaurant from four stars to that all-important five.

Yet it is precisely because of their distastefulness that snowberries might well be the crème de la crème at the Fill. Because birds turn up their beaks at snowberry whenever there are tastier seeds or fruit available in the spring, summer, and fall, the snowberry bushes are still heavily laden with food at the tail end of winter. It is now—when all the grass seeds have been eaten and all the chicory stems stripped—that the birds become desperate enough to eat snowberries. Thus the bad-tasting plants are a life-saving larder for critters who can’t afford a refrigerator.

Today a Lincoln’s Sparrow was making use of the pantry at Kern’s Restoration Pond. It hopped up on a snowberry bush, grabbed a marshmallowy berry, and squeezed. The skin split open, and the sparrow dug around inside to unearth a few seeds, spitting out the skin with a birdy “ptooie.” Soon it was joined by a Spotted Towhee and then two Fox Sparrows.

As the birds ate their vegetables, I was reminded of the seasonality of nature. This is the lean time of year, when wild creatures must do whatever they can to hang on until the earth tilts again toward the life-giving sun, and summer arrives with its bounty. We humans forget how much the seasons really do dominate the planetary food supply. We’ve grown accustomed to eating grapes in January and apples in May, thanks to the wonders of refrigeration and the speed of air freight.

I am glad to watch my favorite sparrows find a food that has been preserved for them not through the inventions of humans but because of the intricate relationships of nature. Snowberries need birds to spread their seeds. Birds need the snowberry even though the plant never bothered to lard its fruit with showy color or sweet taste. Together the snowberry and the sparrow create a balance that benefits both the plant and the bird.

Their interconnectedness is the very staff of life. For all that we do to manufacture our own environment apart from nature, we should remember that we too are not just the growers, but the grown.

Pacific Wren

A Pacific Wren was holding forth in Kern’s Restoration Pond this morning. Pacific Wrens (formerly called Winter Wrens) are our smallest wren, hardly more than brown puffballs, with miniscule tails and big attitudes. They are uncommon at the Fill, so I was glad to hear we are hosting one now. This one was chattering to itself as it went about the serious business of finding food on a cold winter’s day.

Kern’s Restoration Pond is one of my favorite places to set up my campstool and be with the birds. I like to roost just where the Loop Trail bows out and then bends gently west, near the snowberry bushes that Kern’s restoration ecology students have planted to replace invasive blackberries. It’s a quiet spot, sheltered from both the wind and the whoosh of the cars going across the floating bridge.

The birds here seem to appreciate the quietness, too. They keep their singing and chipping low-voiced.  All but the wren.  She didn’t seem to care what anybody else thought. She had a comment to make on everything, and by golly, she was going to have her say.

I call her a “female,” but really I have no idea what the bird’s gender was. With wrens, it’s hard for us humans to tell. But this bird reminded me so strongly of Mrs. Olswang that I couldn’t help but think of her as female. Mrs. Olswang was the most curmudgeonly person I ever knew. She lived at the Caroline Kline-Galland Home, a Jewish nursing home down in Seward Park. I met her when I was in grade school. I had gone to the home one day to meet my mother, who was the secretary there. As I walked up the drive, I saw an old woman with her skirt hiked up, wading in the duck pond in front of the building. Curious, I walked up to ask her what she was doing. But before I could open my mouth, she saw me and said, “Who do you think you are? You just frightened off the ducks, and now I can’t find where they’ve hidden their eggs.” Muttering Yiddish imprecations, she climbed out of the pond, put on her shoes, and clomped off.

Mrs. Olswang was always muttering imprecations. Whenever I saw her in the hallways, her mouth was going a mile a minute, commenting unfavorably on the weather, her arthritis, the food, the fact that you couldn’t get flesh-colored stockings anymore (whatever color “flesh” was),  and—sighting me—how the younger generation was  a train wreck just waiting to happen.

I loved that mean, old woman for her vinegar and her spice. I made up my mind that I was going to get her to smile at me somehow, someday, but I never could. Then one year, May 1 rolled around, and my mother hauled us kids over to the Galland Home to pick wildflowers for May Day. May Day was a very important holiday for the residents, most of whom had emigrated from the Old Country. Every year, my mother would convince our grade-school teachers to have all the kids fold dozens of paper baskets, one for each resident. Then my two brothers, my sister, and I would fill the baskets with flowers and hang one on each doorknob. Mrs. Olswang caught me just as I was hanging a basket for her. “So,” she said, giving me the usual stink eye, “you’re the one who’s been giving me baskets of flowers.”

I waited for the storm to break over my head, but suddenly Mrs. Olswang grabbed me and gave me a big hug. Then with a “hrmph,” she unhooked her basket from the doorknob, went into her room, and slammed the door. I think I might have caught the glimmer of a smile on her face before the door banged shut. But it might have been just a trick of the light.

To many of us in Seattle, January is just a month to get through. The days are short, the light is dim. Gray surrounds us everywhere we look: low clouds fill the sky, tree branches wring their bare, barky fingers, and people bundle up in dark wool or Gortex as we venture forth into bad weather. Our version of cold doesn’t bite with the clean, sharp air of winter; it slobbers with drizzle and rain.

To birds, though, January is a time for romance. The vast flocks of ducks that fill our waters are all coming into their breeding plumage now, looking like newly polished jewels. The Bald Eagles have begun to bring more sticks to their nest at nearby Talaris, and the female is working hard to build herself up for the great task of making two eggs. The male helps her by catching food and laying it at her feet, the eagle equivalent of dinner for two at Palisade’s.

Yesterday, the Red-tailed Hawk pair who have claimed the Fill as their territory decided to join in. The female—the larger of the two—was minding her own business, perched on a cottonwood branch overlooking Sidles Swamp. She was studying the land below, looking for an unwary rat, when the male came winging in from the west.  He threaded his way through the trees to reach her perch and landed on the same branch but some distance away.  The female paid no attention. She was looking south, the male faced north.

Time passed. Then the male took one sidling step toward  her and began gazing at the sky. More time passed. He took another step and scanned the swamp too, as though intent on finding his own rat.  No rats coming into view after several minutes of scanning, the male took one last step and leaned over to brush against the female. She turned her head to gaze at him over her shoulder. “Oh, you here?” she seemed to ask. She turned around to join him side by side, and their bills briefly touched. If she had had lips, I think she would have been smiling.

I certainly was. As a female myself, I had to admire her performance—and his persistence.

(Photo © and courtesy of Kathrine Lloyd)

The kids, kids no longer. (Photo copyright Kathrine Lloyd)

In December 2008, the Arctic pummeled western Washington with a fist of ice and snow that paralyzed us for days. We weren’t the only ones to suffer. The swans who had settled in the Skagit for the winter were forced away from the farmers’ fields, where they liked to forage for fallen kernels of grain throughout the winter. Instead, they had to find new habitat in order to survive.

Several of them came here, to the Fill, where they found a welcome refuge. The decaying lilies and other water plants in the shallows of Union Bay provided a rich smorgasbord that the birds liked just as much as the grain they usually ate.

A dozen stayed until spring, providing a daily vision of grace and beauty that brought joy to all of us who gazed upon them. Among the swans who stayed were three babies. Well, teenagers, really. They were juvenile swans who had hatched in the Far North, grown their flight feathers there, and then migrated with their families. You could easily tell them apart from the grown-ups because Trumpeter Swan juveniles are gray. They don’t turn white until it’s time for them to head back north again in the spring.

For months the babies paddled around in the lake, gaining strength. As time passed, they began to separate from their parents, as teenagers do. They would paddle over to the Cut to forage, or drift among the marsh islands in the west. But no matter where they went, they stayed together. Almost always, they were within touching distance of each other, and often they would touch. A close family.

When spring came, they flew off to the north, together as always. I was both happy and sad to see them go. Babies must grow up and leave home. It is nature’s way, so I must feel happy that they grew strong enough to strike out on their own. Still, I worried for them, as I do for my own kids, grown up as they might be. Life is chancy, and there are many dangers.

Last December, though, the three swans returned, still together, still touching. They were all white now, fully adult. A proud sight to see them floating so gracefully in the bay. Another winter passed, and the swans flew again to the north when spring told them it was time to go.

I’ve been watching for them to come back again, ever since I turned the last page of my calendar to December. Would the swans return? Had they survived? Were they safe? Would I ever see them again? On the very last day of December, two appeared magically in Union Bay. “They’re back! They’re back!” I wrote ecstatically at the kiosk. Little did I know.

For on January 1, the first day of the New Year, I was out counting all the birds of the Fill for Seattle Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count. My husband and I set up my scope on the deck of the crew house to count the bazillions of ducks out on the bay. As I swiveled the scope back and forth, I looked for the two swans, hoping to add them to the count. Sure enough, there they were, swimming on the far side of the bay. As I watched them through the scope, a flurry of white appeared, a mighty splashing, water everywhere. I blinked, and there were SIX swans. Three touched each other briefly, then separated into pairs, never far from each other.

The kids have come home for the holidays, bringing their new mates with them. I am smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. Oh the joy.

The birds of the Fill are not avi-kingdom’s earliest risers. In fact, contrary to how all the field guides say birds should behave, ours do not spring up off their perches to greet the pre-dawn with a chorus of songs and perky cheeps. With the exception of a few over-eager robins and the occasional gung-ho wren, Fill birds can’t even seem to muster a grumpy squawk in the dawn’s early light. They prefer to sleep in.

I can sympathize. While I do usually get up before dawn, I am not an early-morning get-out-of-the-houser. The heater is too cozy, the coffee too hot. The Times crossword calls to me, and all too frequently I answer. It’s hard to face the cold, dank chill of a Seattle winter. Much easier to spread an afghan over my lap, pull out the footrest of my Barca-lounger, and lean back in total comfort. Ah, civilization.

But then I start to hear a little voice in my head. It belongs to Ricky Young, famous Washington surfer. He is saying, “If you do nothing, nothing happens. If you do something, something happens.” His voice echoes Debra Shearwater’s, that pelagic birder par excellence. She begins to chant, “If you snooze, you lose.”

Right. Birds have flown to the Fill in the night. There is no telling what might await me. Time to force myself to hit the trail. I lower the lounger and put away the paper. I need to see.

If my friends’ voices manage to blast me out of the house before dawn, I am treated to sights so celestial they make the world look as if heaven itself had descended to visit the earth for a short time. The sun, too delicate to glare from on high, shines a soft glow of pale gold over the land. The waters of the Cove smoke with mist. Each blade of grass is beaded with diamond drops, each stone on the path casts a soft shadow.

As I walk toward the shore, the world gradually wakes up. A Red-tailed Hawk shakes her feathers, spreads her wings, and glides over the field. The sparrows who have been gathering the grass seeds in the field around the Lone Pine Tree for the past few weeks begin to arrive. They eye me warily when I set down my camp stool, but after a little while, they allow me to join the flock. It is so still, I can hear their little feet scrape against the grass as they search for seeds. It is a crackly, homey kind of sound, very comforting to the ear.

The sparrows’ busy work reminds me of the times I used to join my mother in the kitchen before the rest of the family woke up. She would bustle around making lunches, getting breakfast ready, clearing the last of the dishes out of the sink. She let me sit there as she worked, giving me the great gift of feeling cared for. It is a feeling the flock grants me in the dawn, before the rest of the world wakes up.

May the Fill similarly bless you and keep you this day.

When I turned a tomboyish 12, my mother decided it was time to socially refine me. So she signed me up for ballroom dancing classes. A friend of hers, in cahoots, signed up her 12-year-old son. The results, for a girl more interested in sports than in deportment, in running more than in romance, were all too predictable. My cha-cha was more of a chug-chug. My box step never broke out of the box. And since we girls were all taller than the boys (Mom’s friend’s son included), my swing dance looked more like the limbo whenever  my partner tried in vain to twirl me under his upraised arm. As the popular limbo lyric asked, “How low can you go?” I couldn’t wait for the class to end, after which I vowed never to set foot in a ballroom again.

My vow broke, though, last Friday when I found myself attending a grand ball at the Fill. Oh, not in any of the CUH’s buildings. This one was staged in nature itself, and its stars were two Belted Kingfishers. I was privileged to have a front-row seat on my camp stool. The show began, as such affairs often do, with the pair making a dramatic entrance. The female came first, swooping in from the marina and chattering her castanets. The male followed, trailing his wings like a cape. Ah, I thought, the passionate, Spanish-inspired Paso Doble. The two circled each other, now almost touching, now flying apart. Then the male hovered in place while his partner danced all around him in a wild clatter of skirts. So fiery was she that one of her feathers flew off and blew away on the wind.

Then the mood changed, and the dance became a languid waltz, with the pair drifting over the bay and dancing back as one, swirling around each other in endless spirals of beauty. I found myself nodding in time to the unheard music. A Strauss tune, without a doubt. The minutes passed, and still the pair danced, on and on without pause. I watched for over an hour.

Then the mood changed again, as the two flew apart into different corners of the ballroom. I sat up on my camp stool. Something dramatic was about to happen. It began with the pair flying furiously toward each other, crossing in midair, turning back, crossing again, then circling to draw vast O’s and X’s in the sky. Finally, they joined for the most spectacular of all dance runs: the grand passage of the Quickstep. In a diagonal across the entire Fill, the two danced intertwined, wing beat matching wing beat, swoop following swoop, the moves too quick for the eye to follow. I thought my heart would stop.

The kingfishers reached the edge of the ballroom, flew back, and met again over my head, prepared for another pass. How much longer could they keep it up? I wondered. My derriere had long since lost all feeling, but neither bird showed any sign of flagging.

The female speaks her mind.

Then, just as they were starting their second grand pass, another male appeared and tried to cut in. The first male objected. A fight ensued. The female, no shy flower, egged on her chevalier from the sidelines. But as the fight continued, she seemed to realize she had lost their focus. She tilted her head, puzzled. “Wha?” she seemed to ask herself. “I, no longer the center of attention? This cannot be.” With a final (probably unprintable) remark, she flounced off the stage and went home.

Dance floor dudgeon. How well I understood.