By Anne W. Semmes
On a holiday weekend filled with New Orleans jazz and a remembering of the sacrifice so many have given for our freedom, my visiting daughter Elise Groo and I celebrated nature writ large. It began on one of her early morning walks in my Byram neighborhood where the Byram River makes its appearance at Byram Road and West Putnam, on the Connecticut-New York border.
Poised at a high point over the river there came before her swimming upriver a Mute Swan encircled by eight cygnets! With her sending me a texted photo – my eyes popped out! I once had my own swans living on the Byram River on Riversville Road and was treated during those magical years with two cygnets. I never heard of a Mute Swan having that many offspring, even at Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset, England where they cluster together just as when the monks raised them there hundreds of years ago.
And today, I’ve been told Mute Swans are not welcome here anymore, being an import and a threat to food sources for other waterfowl like Black Ducks.
And then, I received another texted photo of a deer and her young fawn, carefully treading their way along the river’s edge under the trees. All this with a bustling Post Road nearby! I texted my daughter back, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Thank you, Thoreau.
The next surprise came even closer to home. My daughter had found sanctuary on another early morning walk beside a church, and entranced with hearing bird song, put her Merlin app to work and identified a Baltimore Oriole, my favorite. She soon lured me to the spot, and we became privy to a female oriole building her nest right in front of us! This can’t be possible! An Oriole’s nest is usually high up in a tree! But there, almost reachable, hidden cleverly amongst oak tree leaves, was that intricately woven nest, near completion, with the female busily adding the last strands.
The last surprise came on a visit to Bruce Park toward the end of last Friday. We were sitting beside the pond, along with other families, when what should appear, but a mother Black Duck [it looked to me] followed by 11 ducklings streaming behind her! We watched transfixed as the mother duck moved her brood along the edge of the pond. And then she was headed for the road that passed through the park separating two bodies of water. No, Mother duck, you must not do that with 11 ducklings. There’s weekend traffic!
My daughter to the rescue! As they climbed the hill to the road, my daughter stepped onto the road and stopped the traffic, as the mother duck led her ducklings daringly across the road. And there on the other pond was another incredible surprise.
Poised on a lovely stationary green float was a Mute Swan family, this time with four cygnets, looking happy and safe, and surely graced to have access to this nice float! Yet sternly poised was the male swan, ready to defend when necessary. But the arrival of the mother duck and her 11 ducklings sailing by brought no alarm.
So, there we sat, mesmerized by the sight of these wonders. Until the flow of curious weekenders come menacingly close with their cameras clicking. Time to disembark, moved the male swan, with his family sliding into the water, and off they went in search of a little more wildness.
