What’s That?
“What is that?” I asked my husband one day. I took a picture of a bird from the front. It was drinking water at Step Creek, and I showed it to my husband at home. Bigger than a sparrow, but smaller than a pigeon, seemed to feel at home in the water like a mallard, but didn’t have webbed feet…and I never saw it before.
The next day, I saw it swimming in Deeper Pond, around the reeds of the island. So I was standing above it, on Main Bridge, and could see down on it from above. It looked like a brown bird now. Wait; I thought it was a gray bird!
Gray from the front, Brown from the top, swimmer without webbed feet…a real mystery fellow…I decided it was a chameleon bird, so I named it “Kameil”. (I found out later on it’s called the Moorhouse Hen, or Common Coot. I like “Chameleon Bird” better, don’t you?)
This Place Was Boring Anyway…
Although this bird was a good swimmer, she could fly too I noticed she lifted up and flew to the other side of the park one day, I don’t know where.
Until that day I found her swimming at Carp Cove which she’d made her new home. Of course, when she was swimming outside, you could see her, but once she got inside the leaves or hidden in the brush, there was no way anyone would know she was in there.
Well, it was just about this time, I was excited to find the carp Softi and Patience swimming under the brush there at Carp Cove too. Of course, Kameil, being new to the place, didn’t know the heartbreaking story of all the other carp in the creek being killed by the previous year’s typhoon.
Little by little though, she figured out what happened and also saw that the carp Softi and Patience, who made it safely through were still frightened by it and could not swim out in the open unless it was perfectly still.
A few minutes later, I saw Kameil go down the creek. She got up on the bank and looked around almost as if to say, “This place was boring anyway…” And she got back in the water; swam all the way to Step Creek; and asked the mallards if she could live with them (if that didn’t work, she could try flying to another river nearby).
I think Kameil saw how the carp needed to have it quiet, be by themselves for awhile, so she “got bored” with the place all of a sudden. Thanks, Kameil.
Several months later, when Softi and Patience were completely adjusted, the carp heard about what Kameil did and invited her back. Kameil returned, not smack dab in the middle of Carp Cove, but in a brush nearby.
Little Black Bird with Red Duckbill
Kameil’s duckbill turned bright red, and a faceguard grew up to the temple; only the tip of the bill stayed yellow. Kameil’s body, now bigger than a pigeon, darkened into a handsome black. No, no webbing grew between the toes; but Kameil still swam well with those long yellow legs.
When the corona virus hit, for a while, schools were closed, and kids came to draw pictures of animals or scenery at the park.
To one little boy, I remember pointing out “the little black bird with the red duckbill”, who was standing on the boulder in the center of the pond—of course, it was Kameil.
Homecoming!
I’m glad Kameil’s hold on that boulder was strong. Because one day in April, after a hard rainy day when the water level of the creek rose, many carp came up from Deeper Pond to Duck Pond. There is no other way to express it: they were making such a stir, a surprised bird might have fallen into the water.
It was spring. Time to spawn, to form new life. There were carp in the grasses on the banks here and there splashing about; others were up the creek; still more were swirling around, leaping out of the water in the pond around the fountain.
Kameil probably smiled on the inside (Birds do not smile on the outside), thinking, “Welcome home, carp…even if you are a little crazy. It is certain to make carp like Softi and Patience happy.”
But Kameil had her home to go to also. When the mallards left to go home, Kameil said goodbye to Iwatsuki Park.
Happy Homecoming for you too Kameil.
END
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