Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Cormorants have arrived!

There has been a lone Cormorant checking out The Lake for the last week or so. I thought we might escape the huge influx of them that we had this Spring and last Fall, but looking out just a few minutes ago through the windows blurred by rain we saw about 30 to 50 of them right outside the house, just beyond our pier. I guessed at 30 to 50 because it is impossible to count them, they are in a constant state of flux as they are all diving and coming back up again in a constant round of excited gusto. There is absolutely no attempt by them at being tidy, they just go down and come up without even trying to be neat and tidy so that I can count them! How thoughtless of them. They have no consideration of my helplessness as I try in vain to get some kind of accurate count. But I'm afraid the 30 to 50 is the best that I can do for now. I seem to remember in the Spring that I had days when 50 to 100 was the best that I could do. If the number of fish that I have been able to catch in the last few weeks is anything to go by, they will all be gone by the end of the day!
The rain continues to fall, it began early in the afternoon of last Wednesday and has not stopped at all since. Our neighbor Christine informed me solemnly that, "It is a Nor'easter, and they always last for 3 days." When I called her today to tell her that she must be mistaken and that Nor'easters must last 4 or even 5 days she quite blithely said, "It must be two Nor'easters back to back!" Unlike me, some people think very quickly, or perhaps she is right. Who knows. Anyway we have at least 4 inches of rain in the bucket outside - my informal rain gauge - and this in only 3 or 4 days. We had point 12 inches of rain in the first 14 days of October, that is just over one tenth of an inch! But I am happy to see this rain as I spread a lot of grass seed onto the bare patches in our lawn in mid September. As we had no rain after that either, I used the sprinkler to get them moving, but became disenchanted and lazy after a few sessions and no sign of any seedlings. Now I am hopeful that we will finally see a thick green lawn gracing our front and rear deserts.
I will let you know if this happens.

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David.