Life On a Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

Nuisance? Perhaps, but a beautiful bird

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A parental pair of Canada geese across the lake with their new brood. First sighting this year. The goslings must have numbered ten or more--fluffy, yellow-brown, downy creatures, all swimming tightly clustered. If one gets straggled, it quickly strives to catch back up and join the--what's it called?--gaggle?

Many people hate the geese because of (1) their copious droppings, (2) their noise, even in the middle of the night. But they are a graceful, beautiful bird, and the way they look after each other's goslings reveals a strong sense of community.

We can learn much from the bird community.

Opening day? Not for us it ain't

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Yesterday, a Saturday, the lake was peppered with boats--crafts of all shapes and sizes, even though our lake is open year round. People flock to lowland lakes in Washington State on the third Saturday in April out of, I guess, some sort of migration instinct or cultural habit. The trout have been here for some time. And they were fairly ready takers to a variety of proven techniques. Trolling is one favorite method.

The trout were so small this year that they didn't not have the bulk to fight hard, and often three fishers to a boat (usually a family, dad and kids) did not even turn off the electric troll in order to play out a fish before reeling it is. They simply ploughed ahead and brought the 8-inch rainbow skipping along the surface to the net or boat itself. And, surprisingly, the fish got released, either because people don't really like to eat their catch, or their catch was too small to be deemed happily edible.

Maybe Mom would laugh at them with a basket of so small fish as a result of such early rising and elaborate preparation.

Opening day for decades was a Sunday, until some new hire with Fish and Wildlife thoughtlessly scheduled it for Easter Sunday. (I think it hilarious.) Then the tradition got changed because of public pressure. (Also, Moms didn't like it to be scheduled for family church-going day, all along.)

I did not fish for several good reasons. But maybe I'll give it a moment's attention on Monday, when the crowds will be down. But I was losing heart because of the smallness of the fish. This after a superb early spring for big holdover rainbows. The fresh hatchery plant comes as a big disappointment.

Or perhaps a small disappointment.

Spring fields of Earth Day,
(pastel)

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Earth Day, is it? Ah, I remember the first. It was 1970, and I was newly hired as the Editor in Engineering at the University of Washington, with my major (and sole) responsibility editing a quarterly journal that was sent to like institutions and engineering firms all over the world.

Heady stuff, only it left me with a lot of time on my hands. (I'd offered to do it on a contract basis, keeping my old job as copywriter for Safeco,  just down the street, but the Dean said nix, upped the pay, and here I was.)

Only it was Earth Day, the first ever, and school shut down for all ostensible purposes, that is, there were no students around. All were off marching in protest of the war in Viet Nam or, today, celebrating spring in a novel way.

What to do, in my special case? I was a dedicated steelhead flyfisher and though our local streams remained closed, rumor was, the Kalama had fresh fish running. So I headed South for 135 miles of freeway driving and arrived in early afternoon in a rain storm. I waded into the clear river and began casting hard into water that looked like it might hold steelhead, and it did.

But they proved to be just big juveniles. I caught one after another-- trouty looking fish of around eleven inches, a few smaller and a few an inch longer.

They all had rainbow stripes and dark, paprika coloration. After about thirty or forty such fish, all carefully released back into a river than was discoloring rapidly, I began to tire of the good sport. The river would soon be unfishable from mud flow. So I headed back towards home.

There was a hatchery a few miles downstream and I decided to stop and see if I could find out what was going wrong. Or maybe going  right, since I'd had a lot of fun, though no adult steelhead.

The hatchery attendant was a fish biologist and told me, with a depreciating laugh, that my fish were steelhead, all right, but they were steelhead parr; they should have been steelhead smolts, only they hadn't undergone their "sea change," for some odd reason, turning bright and their scales loose. Instead they had retained their rainbow hatchery coloration, and wanted to stay in the river and not migrate.

In a panic, and because a new crop of juveniles would be along soon to fill up the hatchery rearing ponds, personnel had decided to jettison the brood into the river. And since they had not, that year, developed the instinct to migrate, they just swam hungrily around, looking for food, until they had encountered fishers like me.

"So they won't go to sea and come back as adults in a couple of years?" I asked plaintively.

"Very doubtful," said the fisheries man. And then he sheepishly explained, "It sometimes happens."

This is fish-hatchery talk that translates, "something went wrong." And, true enough, two years later they had a weak run.

But I will always remember that quick and easy spring fishing. Earth Day! Might have called it Rivers Day.

We each celebrate Earth Day in our own way. Each is highly different.

This was mine.

Male woodie on our porch rail, looking hungry and lost

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She is on the nest and he is lonely. Here is where they used to dine together on special bird food we bought expressly. Only a few days ago the pair of them were here, along with another male, which she disdained and he showed hostility toward. There was no doubt they were a couple.

He made sure at the dance that he did not "cut in."

She will lay an egg a day, according to my bird book, until she has enough for a full brood. For a few  minutes each day she will leave the nest to snatch a few hurried bites.

The nest is a woodduck box some early denizen on the lake provided on a nearby tree in a wild, naturally-protected area. Each year she returns to it, or one like it, cleans it out, and builds a new nest. When the brood hatches and grows a bit, she will urge them out of the nest, which is about twelve feet off the ground. "Urges" in a mild term for it: she boots them out, and they learn the their delight that they already know how to fly, or flutter, to the littered ground beneath. And almost immediately they will be sighted along the secure shoreline following her in tight array, oh, perhaps as many as a dozen of them.

Alas, attrition is  high. Their number starts dropping off alarmingly in the days to come. Twelve to ten to nine to seven. Often she ends up with but two or three. This worries Norma and me greatly. (These are our grandchildren.) And each year, as their numbers fade away, we fear for the coming year and the prospect of no more woodducks.

But--along with the rhododendrons, cherry blossoms, and sprouting roses, each year-- the ducks keep coming, and we are supremely grateful.

Robert Arnold, Editor
rcarnold@direcway.com