Watch

I start at my usual big lake put in. It is very calm and the clouds are giving way to the sun. I head north to Union Bay crossing the mouth straight away as I head up to the NE lagoon.

Three trumpeter swans fly past on their way east across the big lake.

Once in the bay, the ducks are active, seemingly busy for no reason.
And then, an eagle sweeps from the east, low, skimming the water and set on a coot a quarter mile distant.
The eagle begins circling having forced a coot to dive but it gives up soon and while I am momentarily distracted,
my head inside the canoe,
three eagles appear in an instant above my head whirling and whistling, a territorial discussion.
I was not ready for that at all. Not one bit.
One retreats to a tall fir tree and the resident pair takes to the top of a boat house.

As I near the lunch counter, feathers in the water show that one eagle has already eaten today.

The ducks and coots, in a large flock, regroup off of north point.

In the NE lagoon, all is quiet and a red tailed hawk sits high in a tree on the north shore.

I stop between #1 and #2 islands and just sit, waiting to see what will happen, because something always will happen.
A heron sits to my right near the beaver lodge and another sits behind me. They are just sitting.
Once in awhile, a bufflehead or two flies past.
I hear honking and see the three swans returning a half mile out from where I sit.
Swan honking is not at all like goose honking. Swan honks are comical, like car horns in an old movie.
As I drift closer to the heron, it gets up and leaves, but not on account of me.

I dip my paddle once and change my view, just a bit, and the canoe comes to rest in the submerged branches at the base of the beaver lodge.