| Natural History Notes From the Winter Cabin |
in complaint
of the cold. They flew straight over me and Niobe, wheeled over
Trail Lake, and flew resolutely back downstream. Maybe they were
optimistically scouting open water, but there was none. ~ Robert Hoskins
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Two days after the ranch closed for winter, a mink ran
past Cabin A’s porch shortly after dawn. Mink have bullet heads, cartridge
bodies, and smoky tails. I saw a black flash against the rocks in
the corner of my eye; the mink was in the willows before my brain
truly marked it. Mink rarely leave the shelter and richer fare of streamside, but this one—perhaps a juvenile—took a shortcut through the sagebrush flat in front of Cabins A and B to the usual mink path under the bridge. Its den is under willows on Torrey Creek near Ring Lake. The Creek between Ring and Trail Lakes is home range for at least two mink; there’ll be more mink in late April or early May. Water ouzels also range near the bridge. During the first week of March the ouzels finally paired. In full sunshine I watched the male and female fly back and forth beneath the bridge, flying a hundred yards upstream then downstream, chittering like the gears of toys, often pulling up short and lighting on a rock to dip a few times before plunging into the fast water. Sometimes they plunged as a pair. Once the male leaped into snow beside the Creek and dipped thrice, wings slightly akimbo, before rejoining the female on a rock. I like to think the ouzel’s constant dipping is a greeting to the water people, although it probably began as courtship behavior—the male dips to the female during breeding season. However, since the ouzel dips year round, maybe it really is a greeting to the water people as well as to each other. The ouzel nest is a big, partly-hollowed block of packed creek moss that rests on the shelf of one of the steel girders under the bridge. I had wondered why I sometimes saw a single ouzel fly out from under the bridge as Niobe and I walked across, but I hadn’t seen it fly under from the other side. So I looked and found the nest under the bridge, where it seems the female resides all year. Often during late October and early November, thick fogs swirled above the lakes and drenched the Douglas firs, birches, and willows at water’s edge. Ice film formed on the Lily Pond, the slow channels of the Creek, and Ring Lake the early mornings of November 2nd. As freeze-up was beginning, mallards and barrow’s goldeneyes claimed Trail Lake for their own and Canada geese paddled the center of Ring Lake. On November 4th and 5th, a flock of rare white trumpeter swans, their beaks as black as minks’ heads, joined the geese at the open center of Ring Lake. There were 18 trumpeters, including three gray-plumaged juveniles. To tell the two species apart without binoculars: the swans feed upright, dipping only their long necks under water, while geese feed less elegantly butt up. The mallards and goldeneyes have stayed the winter, swimming where fast water in the Creek prevents freezing. The swans stayed only two days, and the geese a bit longer. I didn’t see geese again until February 8th, when three flew up valley through a sub-zero cold snap, the second of the winter. They were honking loudly—perhaps |
