Hoodeds arriving

The warming trend not only continued, it accelerated. It's not beach weather, to be sure, but nearby, a wide spot in a local river had unfrozen, and as I looked at the still water, I noticed a pair of Hooded Mergansers coming in for a landing. Hoodeds are gorgeous ducks, with rich body colors and that standout white fan on the back of the male duck's head. You simply can't miss them. Most of the winter, however, they're elsewhere—perhaps a little south or, at least, in the local estuaries where there's less ice to restrict a Hooded's diving for fish. Come ice-out in March, they return, sometimes courting and nesting in the neighborhood. Well, partial ice-out was today, and, right on some kind of schedule, a pair of Hooded males came in for a landing and promptly started angling. If luck was with them, they dined on native brook trout.