Life On the Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

Back again for another year. (Picture taken this morning, the last day of March.) Question is, will they breed successfully?

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Last year, a number of pairs of wood ducks returned to the lake and went through their usual courtship routines. But no offspring were observed swimming around the lake shallows, as in all past years. What happened to them, nobody knows. And the adults then disappeared, as well.

It was a year of considerable construction activity. Well, not this year; this year has been hit by (happily) no new construction of lakeside homes, and a few of last year's houses are still unsold, as in the rest of the county, state, and I guess nation.

This may be a wood duck blessing. Let us hope so. Soon these shy, beautiful ducks will nest (if they haven't already) and she will lay an egg (what is it, one a day?), and soon then the ducklings will be kicked out of the nesting high-perched boxes and flutter unobserved to the ground, able to flutter-fly and swim in quick procession along the shoreline, closely bound to their mother.

But not last year; last year remains a painful memory of long, diminished expectations. For wood ducks are an indicative species of a healthy ecosystem, and by swift degree the lake is losing its battle with good health.

The initial seven species of fish in the lake when we moved here, a dozen years ago, has shrunk to three or four. We have lost for good our black crappie population (large) and our large mouth bass adults are so few that knowledgeable fishers no longer show up in fancy boats and probe our shallows. Fewer adult can be spotted on their nests along the shoreline, but there are still great schools of bass fry in the shallows each June. But it takes many years to grow an adult bass, and ours don't seem to raise past six or seven inches.

I took a picture of my first six-pounder, released unharmed. Now it serves as sad consolation on the wall in another spring of low expectations.

But maybe there will be some baby wood ducks to help sustain us. We shall have to wait and see.

It is not a bad springtime preoccupation, come to think of it.

Let's have some more of those crocuses. Okay.

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Two breeding pairs of wood ducks this morning! Norma called me away from my orange juice to see them. They came streaming into the shallows as though they hadn't been away for better than nine months.

Now, what is so important about four simple wood ducks? Well, their annual arrival at the lake is an event, for they breed here in boxes placed high above ground expressly for them in remote wooded areas that swerve as sanctuaries, and, last year, they went through their observable annual mating rituals, the females disappearing to lay their eggs, as predictable, and the males soon going off to molt. And we denizens awaited the sight of the ducklings on the lake, as usual.

But there weren't any. No baby ducks. Not a one, let alone the dozens we expected, for they produce large broods. And we wondered what had become of them, and the wonderful sight of the renewal of their species.

Perhaps all the home-building activity last year scared them away. There were cat diggers working away every day at sunup, and the whine of chainsaws throughout the day, plus circular saws and incessant hammering of carpenters. None of that this recession-ridden spring and summer. And in the future there are few lakefront lots available for deelopment. So maybe this shyest of all ducks will find a breeding atmosphere here again.

But pessimist in me doubts that we shall be so lucky.

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A trumpeter swan on the lake. This is unusually because they usually stick to the farmers' fields and do not visit the lake. So when I saw a lone one, I grabbed my camera and this shot, which has been considerably altered digitally to produce the above picture.

If you decided to live on a lake, it is important to your enjoyment to learn to identify birds and ducks. I was late in coming to such a pleasure, and used to think that all the ducks I could see on Seattle's Lake Washington were mallards. Then, one day at Magnuson Park, a young man on a ten-speed, wielding Leitz binoculars, put me straight. He let me peer through them at a vast panorama of seabirds bobbing on the swells, far out, and I was an instant convert, right up to the point of buying my own light-weight Leitz field glasses.

One of the best books is the National Geographic Society's Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Shirley L. Scott, editor. My copy lists no author and a wealth of illustrators. No price is listed on the cover. Amazon lists it as $24, but discounts it nearly ten dollars.

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First returning wood duck of the year sighted yesterday, on the water, not on my dock, as pictured. I spotted him (unmistakable!) before breakfast, alone on the lake, then watched for him all daylong, but didn't see him again. Also, my first blackbird, a male, but I'm sure they have been around for a long time, and my poor hearing didn't notify me of their return--if they truly left the lake this winter. Anyway, this guy with the flame on his wing was sitting, delicately balanced, on a cattail stem; if he was singing away, I missed it all.

Then, in mid-afternoon, my first trout of the year, a bright ten-incher. I  have bait fished, off and on, throughout the winter, but stopped catching trout in early December. In most years, I've continued to catch them regularly throughout the winter.

I suspect all the bait fishers at the public access, fishing from shore (as I do), kept catching them until they were about all gone. This was a new event this year, and to keep the guys coming back regularly they must have been nailing them, slowly but steadily.

Another month or so and the Fish and Wildlife department will make its annual plant. Then the hatchery-raised rainbows will acclimatized (or whatever it is that they do) and we will have good fishing again, albeit for small, scrappy fish. But the best fishing will come again in the fall, I suspect, when those trout will have grown nicely and become the takers of flies.

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See these guys? They are lesser scaups, and there are many on the lake these days. Most often they can be found along the shoreline, feeding on rooted weed, diving to pull it up, though they are not the kind of diving duck that will pass up a small perch.

The ice is gone and the various species of ducks have returned and are feeding again, with no ice to get in the way. And--by the way--the name of this website is welcome to the lake, the lake being generic and every lake across the face of North America. Mine is particular, though. It is Ketchum, and has  no relationship to the Idaho town near to where I used to go skiing.

It could just as well be any lake, or, rather, Any Lake U.S.A. And the welcome is to anybody who comes to live on a lake, but in this particular case, Deb and Ted, who arrived this summer and are correctly enthusiastic.

Now, if we only had some trout this winter, as we did have in the past, but they are in very short supply. I  haven't caught one in two months, in spite of my casual efforts. Now, last year, and the year before that one, I was able to nail one or two most afternoons, whenever the lake wasn't frozen.

Fish and Wildlife will be stocking it with rainbow fingerlings in a month or two. They will be small to start with--7 to 10 inches--but will grow nicely through the rich spring and summer months. I'm told, though, they make their best growth in October, just about the time when things green are shitting down for the winter.

Let's hope.

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A great sheet of ice has covered the lake for, oh, a week now, and thin snow has blanketed the ice. But it is now slowly melting. Great puddles of water fill the lowlands and glitter beneath a perpetually gray sky. All is by degrees returning to winter normal.

This morning a flock of about 30 mallards stood on what was left of the ice at the near center of the lake. Odd, we usually don't have so many mallards here. The scaups, cormorants, golden eyes, and mergansers have departed. All are diving ducks that feed on fish and weed underwater.

Where do they go when there is ice and they cannot dive any longer? My wife says they migrate to saltwater, which does not freeze over, at least not around here, where it doesn't get very cold.

If that is so, they should start their voluminous return within hours. Let's see if they will . . . .

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Only a bit of snow so far this winter. It arrives overnight, as the weather front moves in and the temperature drops. We wake to it with mixed feelings. But by noon, most such days, it is gone, or nearly gone, and the cold sun emerges and casts long, winter shadows.

Birds this January are cormorants, common mergansers, golden eyes, lots of Canada geese, buffleheads, lesser scaups, and a beautiful mating pair of hooded mergansers. Plus, of course, a great blue heron or two.