Mallards at Trail Wood Pond

Trail Wood #41 Earl Plato

Spring at Trail Wood Pond
“ As though waiting in the wings a kingfisher sweep in a rattling circuit of the pond and even before the ice is completely out, a pair of mallards comes quacking in to plow through the cold water in a splashing descent. They are our mallards, the pair that stayed with us last year returned safely from the adventures of migration. For no sooner had they alighted than they swam to shore by Summerhouse Rock where they found cracked corn scattered at the water’s edge from last summer. Toward sunset a phoebe calls from the lilac bush.
For the second consecutive year a phoebe has arrived on the exact date when the ice disappeared from the pond. To let it come and go I open the doors of the center edge where phoebes nest each summer. Doors that remain open now throughout the season and on into the summer days.