Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World

The Testimony of the Marsh

m 3 The Testimony of the Marsh At the upper end of a high desert lake, where spring runoff floods into dwarf willows and marsh grass, the coots are so noisy we don’t even try to talk. Two males lower their heads, run across the water, and charge at each other. Butting chests, they start to kickfight. It apparently isn’t easy to kick when you’re a coot on water, but they flop and jump, falling on their backs, trying to grab with one foot and smack with the other. The noise is awful; hooting like gorillas, they splash their wings and slap their feet until they are hidden behind a screen of spray. The Canada geese pretend they don’t notice. The gander swims between his goslings and the coots, a parent herding his children through Times Square. But the yellowheaded blackbirds have no such inhibitions. “Wow,” they say. “Wow.” Frank and I, entirely without shame, sit in the canoe and study the coots with binoculars. Suddenly the fight is over. The coots turn their backs and in utmost contempt, lift their wings as if they were shirttails and moon each other. On their little duckish backsides are two big white dots. Their feathers are ruffled, their foreheads are swollen, and they never stop yacking, a sound that carries all the way across the lake. Nothing in the world matters to a coot, it would seem, but to carry on like this all night. Usually western grebes are stately birds with long white necks and a thoughtful look. But this evening, they’ve got their necks bent so far back their foreheads touch their tails, displaying a gorgeous arc of white throat. Then, just when we think they will turn a backward somersault with the effort to show off, two grebes come together. They lift their heads, stretch their necks to great heights, rise on frantically paddling feet, and rush side by side toward open water, 4 m Holdfast their arched necks as high and proud as prancing stallions. Then they slow, sink, and dive underwater. “Wow,” say the yellow-headed blackbirds. There must be thousands of yellow-heads, each one tilting and swaying on a high branch of a willow thicket, yellow feathers all fluffed out and wings lifted to display blazing white patches and broad shoulders. Chasing, preening, threatening, posturing, showing off, yelling a call that sounds like “shut up,” never shutting up—it’s a nonstop display of rudeness, insults and imprecations, harsh throaty challenges that go on and on. I feel like a playground supervisor in the midst of all this mischief. Somewhere up in the sky, a snipe is carving enormous arcs, its wings whinnying in the wind. The amount of energy devoted to all this aggression and sex and territoriality is astounding. And this says nothing of the swallows, who dive by and snatch insects off the water, or perch, chattering, on a strand of barbed wire stretched over the marsh. Sometimes two swallows separate from the others, fly high in the air, fussing around each other, and then fall together. As they fall, they flutter their wings so they descend in a close spiral, their bodies repeatedly coming together with the lightest touch, a kiss. It’s the most beautiful mating display I have ever seen, and we turn the canoe to get another look at the softness of the touch, the breathtaking plunge, the fluttering fall, the spiral, the dance of falling. And then there is another pair, falling, fluttering, coming together, and just as their wing-tips touch the water, soaring off in different directions. The soft hills on the far side of the lake reflect on water roiled and mussed by waterfowl intent on their purposes, all sound and fury, concentrating with deadly earnest on the business at hand. The noise charges the air like electricity. And then the frogs switch on. First there is the sawing soprano line of the tree frogs, kreck-ek kreck-ek. The red-legged frogs’ calls are deeper, regular on a one-two count, a low-throated GRACKgrick The Testimony of the Marsh m 5 that seems to come from the near edge of the marsh. The lake is a riot, an orchestra of lunatics warming up. All the nighttime hoots and clacks and sighs and squeaks. An eared grebe pops up next to the canoe. He looks us...