Outside the window, on a rock where the narrows enter the salt water pond there are six ‘Shags’ – Cormorants they call them in the bird books.
They are standing erect, their necks stretched upward looking like a stylish grouping of elegant vases, something you might see in an expensive furniture store on Stavanger Drive in St. John’s.
There have been more Cormorants than usual this season. They cruise the water of the harbour in search of food. Gliding across the surface, their dark silhouette is tied with the loon as the most elegant of all the water birds.
It’s a wonder we didn’t name our currency after the Cormorant. Though on second thought, it might not have been good for business.
Consumers, seeing the price of something or other in a retail store might respond with the tried and true “Couldn’t give a shag b’y!”
Sales would plummet. Stock markets would crash and the economy would spiral into a tailspin.
No, it’s a good thing we chose to name our currency for a bird whose name is synonymous with insanity. Much more solid choice. That’s what they have focus groups for.
Looking through the binoculars, I can see two of the pitch black birds have light beige breasts; they are this year’s fledglings, about to embark on their first migration south – ‘Shagging off out of it’.
Because it’s that time again. Our shortest of summers is drawing to a close. Nature’s signals are beginning to appear: shorter days and more easterlies.
Then there are the man made events on the calendar. The regatta is over on Quidi Vidi pond, and it’s time to pull out the long johns. School will be starting in days.
Some of the birds we are used to seeing around our house in Salvage won’t be making the journey south. Unlike most years there were very few of our favourite neighbours, the spotted sandpipers, around this year.
On our beach where there are often parades of infant birds, typically four youngsters to a nest and sometimes as many as three broods, totalling maybe a dozen in a productive year, this year we saw only two little ones.
Then one, then none.
There have been a lot of crows and gulls on the beach. The baby sandpipers, unable to fly, are defenseless, save for scuttling into the tall grass or hiding under the driftwood at the top of the beach.
Within a day of the disappearance of the final surviving youngster, all the adults were gone too. Sad for us, but as a bird watching acquaintance remarked, the crows and gulls have to eat too.
It is nature’s way.
What isn’t nature’s way is what lies in the path of the migrating birds. The Gulf of Mexico awaits them, with its lethal oil slick that tired little birds will discover the hard way, when they alight after their long flight.
Once their feathers are coated with the deadly goo they are doomed, unless a BP executive with a tiny hostess towel appears like magic.
My bird watching acquaintance tried to reassure me the bulk of the oil has been dispersed and maybe he’s right. It could be true. I hope so.
Only a week or so ago, the newspapers and television showed pictures of a smiling Barack Obama swimming in the Gulf with his daughter. Surely the President of the world’s only superpower of the moment wouldn’t risk his little girl in a photo op that wasn’t safe enough for a spotted sandpiper.
In the meantime we watch them go, our fingers crossed they will return in the spring. They are flocking together daily preparing for their voyage.
There’s a crowd of them up above right now! Wait a minute, I don’t recognize those big yellow birds. Let me get the binoculars and take a look.
Let me get them in focus ... Oh yes ... the big Blue Birds, yellow in colour. They always appear at this time of year.
School buses!
The surest sign summer is just about over.
pickersgill@mac.com
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