A fowl day indeed

The lagoon in City Park was so glassy this morning it was a mirror reflecting the white cotton ball clouds overhead. A coot was be bopping along and suddenly took flight and sped it’s way to nowhere but the other side. The white swan circled the small islands towards Carrollton Avenue – my fellow walker tells me she is looking for a nesting place. Before Katrina, the swans regularly used the first island for nests and there were some hatchlings right before the storm hit. For now a Black-Crowned Night-Heron sat peacefully guarding the island, which might be why the swan hasn’t made her nest there. As I rounded the end of the park near Marconi, a flock of white ibis cruised across the green grass looking like poetry in motion and to my right a log lined with dark green turtles shell to shell sported a Tricolored Heron sitting at the tip creating a fabulous sculpture in the water.

Everywhere I looked moss covered oaks, waxy leafed magnolias, palm trees and pines, I felt a sense of how lucky we are to live so close to this park and to be part of its tapestry. When I got to my office, and looked out to the bayou, there were two birds on the wire snuggling and preening each other. Yesterday my neighbor shouted at me from the bayou, “Those ducks are getting it on,” she yelled.

Spring is in the air.

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