Unsettled

I frightened a duck this morning. She was tucked up in the weeds at the edge of the lake and I never saw her before she let out a squawk and scuttered out onto the water, wings spread, feet slapping the surface. She got 20 feet from the shore and instantly settled down, paddling serenely as if she had completely forgotten fleeing for her life 2 seconds before.

The weather is wonderfully unsettled here--storms and heavy rain last night, fitful rays of sun after dawn, then the descent of a pregnant black cloud as I hiked around the perimeter of the lake. Sunlight leaked around the cloud’s edges as it dropped fat drops of rain. The wind rose up and spread sheets of silver over the water. It carried a red-tailed hawk’s call to me from the opposite shore. The bird was perched in the crook of a tall tree, hollering in hope or anger. He took off and flew in wide circles over the lake, defying the rain, which promptly stopped.


Photos of Red-tailed Hawk courtship


The scent of spring, after the rain, Ma Lin (Song Dynasty), 13th century