Speedwell

It's all politics rolling around in my head as I walk my canoe to the south lagoon. As soon as I am in the boat it is all birds in my head. Turning the point of the little island, a heron is frozen in hunting position. I see the first hooded merganser that I've seen in awhile. A northern flicker looks for ants on a downed log before flying to the side of a rotten tree, and a stellars jay sits at the tip top of a tall tree. I head out on the east channel of the burial island, grabbing a dozen golf balls from the bottom. I reach in up to my elbow to get them. The water has returned to a hypothermic temperature - cold. Then straight across the bay to the lunch counter in a light east wind. It is cloudy, but they are winter clouds and it seems that the light is filtering through high ice crystals and not through water droplets. A kingfisher sits in a tree at the railroad island (formed by the remaining pilings of an old railroad stub. Ducks are in loose flocks with some widgeons and gadwalls returning to the mix. Coots are carelessly near shore, so the eagles are not intensely hunting them, yet. Half of the cattails are yellow, and half of the cattails are still green. They are all mixed together though, and this makes a beautiful patterned wall. I scare up a dunlin... I spot one large western grebe in the bay and a smaller look-alike in Lake Union.