29 November 2013. Niagara River, ON. I drove along the Niagara Parkway today, an easy-drive of a road that parallels the Niagara River as it hastens to its much-appreciated headlong plunge. A bright blue-sky day marred only by a inch or two of snow which, while technically permitted since it is winter, is far too early for my taste. But it was an entertaining drive because I saw lots of waterfowl, some real and some fake, and watched a building burn down.
The photo above might at first glance look like a gracious riverside residential scene with a scattering of ducks gathered around a blob in the water. I stopped to take a closer look and was delighted to discover that the ducks were Canvasbacks, a favourite of mine because of their rather regal demeanour; but it was the blob in the water that demanded more study. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, maybe a stranded oil drum (possible but rather too large) or the wreckage of a submarine (hardly likely) or a mid-stream rocky shoal (possible). But there was something on it, something moving; every now and then a seal-flipper-like appendage waved briefly. Well, I was quite baffled for a while until one of those flipper moves had a distinctly anthropomorphic look about it; then I got it. It’s a duck hunter lying prone in a flat-bottomed scow trying to look natural among his anchored flotilla of Canvasback decoys. Of course I have no idea how successful he was or even if he survived the day, for if his scow should break away from its moorings it would be something like a forty-five minute hi-speed ride from here to the edge of the world-famous waterfall and a mere three second drop to the rocks below, duck decoys in tow or no.
Other ducks and related waterfowl were abundant, particularly Mallards, Lesser Scaup, Redheads and a couple of Tundra Swans. Large stringy flocks of Bonapartes Gulls swirled around dipping delicately at the water’s surface for food. Best and perhaps most surprising were a group of Horned Grebes close to shore. One of them had me baffled for a while, it was swimming a little farther out and its neck was extended to its tallest, and I wondered if in fact I’d found a wintering Red-necked Grebe which would, I think, have been extraordinary. But in the end I was convinced that they were all Horned Grebes in winter attire. Not a species to provoke hard-core list-makers to stir from their slumbers, but they made me exclaim Wow! and that is the test by which I measure my Bird of the Day.
Finally, to my astonishment I found myself among a battery of fire trucks and police cars, and I watched as a once elegant, turn-of-the-century, downtown building burned to the ground. It’s a chilling experience to watch someone’s home or livelihood destroyed by fire, but the smoke blackened “Nightclub” sign told a story of a building that had almost certainly seen much better days.
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