the novembrists

 

November light upon the last golden leaves at the lake.

The sweet tang of a lovely winter coldness to remind you you're alive and keep your senses sharp amid the beauty of creation.

The sky caerulescent, just daubed on by God as an afterthought of glory.

X and Cee with their five baby swans, big as spaniels, are crowding around the picnic table.

Jess and Pancho, my sheep dog and Jack Russell, are on the far side of the table doing an excellent job on their extension leads of not getting too close to the big white tail biting birds.

They're real pro dogs at handling swans.

They stay away from them and if there's an accidental beak tail incident they don't retaliate but look at me as if I've really let the side down.

They are dogs of character.

A sixth baby swan watches us from the far side of the lake.

She's been weaned but X doesn't have the heart to run her completely as he did with the first of his weanlings a month ago.

He lets her stay nearby but won't let her onto the water.

I've named her Calista Flockheart after a television actress. The other kids I just call generically Baybay.

A crowd of ducks are skirting around the swans and calling for attention. There's crows and jackdaws too. One of the crows is known as Buzzcut because he looks like he's had his hair distinctively styled.

The female crows are hilarious because they really do seem to scold the males as if it's the males' responsibility to get them some bread.

The males look unaccountably sheepish when it happens and they've nothing to give.

Honker the golden goose is moving through the mob inimitably calling as he goes.

He's bigger than the ducks but he defers to them in any tightly contested scramble for morsels. He still gets more than anyone else because his honk is so distinctive it's like he's calling my name.

The ducks have gotten very cheeky with the swans and will almost snatch bread from their beaks if their heads are low or from right in front of them if there's a chance of getting in and out quick.

Ducks who get too confident get an occasional reminder from the adult swans. But nothing too harsh unless by accident.

And a bunch of seagulls are swooping down, hovering and snatching out of the air the pieces of bread that I toss to them.

The seagulls are less cheeky than they were, perfectly happy with this way of doing things.

I think they've learned to accomodate the others.

In the past some of the seagulls would veritably mug a duck or a swan for a piece of bread.

It is a mesmerically merry scene when a flight of seagulls line up in the air a few feet above me hovering for food as I sit at a picnic table.

I think the whole thing is what my townsmen would call dinging, that is to say, it is a qualitative experience that I find endlessly entertaining.

I am so engrossed in the seagulls that for a few moments I forget everybody else until a a phalanx of swan beaks reminds me from all sides that we are not put on this earth just to feed seagulls.

Three loaves of bread.

It's getting a bit Irish.

I have another one in the car for Bob and Grace and their five who unlike X and Ceecee's kids actually do have names. They're called after famous bread eating medieval Irish saints to wit: Iserninus, Benignus, Severinus, Darerca and Moneena.

My old school teacher back in the 1970s Mr Locks was a bit of a history scholar and hearing that Iserninus (the saint not the swan) is recorded in tradition as having been left to preach in Kilcullen by Saint Patrick, attempted to name the town's new school Saint Iserninus's. Father Keogh heard what was afoot and sneaked off to register the school as Saint Brigid's.

Back in the present I wander down the marges of the lake and find Calista.

She is a gentle thing.

Then around a corner, I come upon an unexpected swan. He is young but more than a baby. His feathers are all white and on his back he has only a trace of the mottled brown you see on the babies and cadet swans.

He runs towards me like an old friend, wings flapping, and getting up quite a speed.

It takes but a moment to name him Snowball which is a name I've wanted to use since some human children suggested it to me as a good name for a swan a few weeks ago.

"Arrah how ya Snowball."

I'm betting he's one of last year's babies because of his initial reaction and because he feeds from my hand. I am also betting that X will not let him stay here.

Across the road I find Bob and Grace and the Irish saints.

They stay on the water at the first lake while I throw bread to them.

Bob had started to wean his family earlier last year, in late October I think, when he ruled the middle lake, that is before X moved him on. Bob hasn't let any of this year's babies go yet.

X who lost a lot of babies last year to fortune, four out of seven, never weaned any of the surviving three until it was time to have a new family.

This year, he's already weaned two, even though he's letting Calista linger a bit. And like I say, Bob and Grace have weaned none this year.

How beautiful they all are.

How good life is.