Busy fall
Fall is a busy season in Madison. As I walk home by the bay, I see quite a few more people out walking or biking than I do in the heat of summer, when I might as well have the bay to myself as often as not. We’re fond of our fleece, we Frozen Northers. These times, when a bit of fleece is all that’s needed to be perfectly comfortable, are the best times to be here.
The vagaries of daylight-savings mean that for the last week or so I’ve been walking to work through utterly glorious sunrises, the ones that look so stupidly fake when painters try to reproduce them. You won’t catch me complaining about it—until next week, when I won’t see them any more.
The weather was so odd this spring that we didn’t get our usual raft of coots on the bay. They’re back now. Coots are not graceful birds; they are little black bobbing blobs with white beaks, and for all they’re quite social, they can also be quite mean to each other in close quarters. It’s rather astonishing that these birds manage to migrate, as bad as they are at flying. Watching a bunch of them deciding to shift location is a hoot: they splash-splash-splash their feet along the surface of the water flapping their stubby wings as hard as ever they can, eventually lifting heavily off the water and lumbering on a few yards before they splash down again feet-first, looking relieved.
They come by ones and then dozens, until there are hundreds on the bay—and they’ll go just as quickly, in the space of a few days, when the cold becomes too much. We’ll see them again in spring… and in the meantime, there are other things we’ll be busy at, we who stay.