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| Harlequin duck |
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| Bufflehead |
Nantucket this Martin Luther King Day weekend is wracked by storms. The wind slashes rain against the windows and whips sand against the house. Sunrises at seven are behind banks of clouds and fog. The gray clouds are moving and humans are hiding out indoors. Sunset is after 4 pm.
Gannets swooping and diving, harlequin ducks surfing (Sankaty is their Nantucket home), long tail ducks bobbing, eiders flying, gulls soaring along the bluff. Wigeons, Gadwalls, geese, swans at Sesachacha ‘s western edge munching what the wind has blown there. Fallout from the weather: Gull carcasses, a woodcock carcass on Barnard Valley Road.Crows and vultures abound.
During breaks in the rain (and sometimes in the rain), I breathe in the island. Pine greens, lichen neons, holly, switch grass plumes, bare trees. Puddles deep but the parched ponds like Almanac and Pout Ponds still low. Josh and I hiked Norwood farm and drink in the sounds of walking in winter. Tree branches rubbing each other in the wind, deer move through the underbrush, the swish of swans wings as they fly overhead, and... a tractor mowing the underbrush!
When we head back to the ferry (the first to run after many cancellations because of high seas), it is through snowflakes.
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| Almanac Pond |
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| Lost Farm |
