For the first time in five days, I managed to take a long walk. Evening meetings and snow and early sundowns have kept my walks short.

I walked over the bridge to Pope’s Island. The water in the harbor looked black and gray, winter colors. One or two small gray-white chunks of ice floated near shore. I came around the tree next to the marina building, and saw four black-and-white ducks calmly swimming fifty feet from shore: Buffleheads, three males and a female. I’ve seen a dozen or so cautious Buffleheads nearly every time I’ve walked on Pope’s Island; usually swimming away from me as fast as they can. These four, howver, were not nearly as wary, so I stood and watched them for a while. I like the look of Buffleheads: the neat black-and-white males, the black female with her white cheek patch.

A lot more ducks were swimming at the far end of Pope’s Island: thirteen, no fourteen more Buffleheads; then another six; two dozen in all. I walked across the bridge to Fairhaven. A hundred or so pigeons who had been resting on the docks by the old Seaport Motel started up all at once, wheeled acorss the sky, and settled back down. There was another duck behind them. I headed down to the edge of the water to see what it was, cursing the fact that I had left the binoculars at home; but the duck, whatever it, was right in the sun. A Ruddy Duck? Another female Bufflehead? I couldn’t be sure.

On the other side of a little stone pier, just past a skin of ice, were still more Buffleheads, maybe another two dozen. Half a dozen Scaup were diving and feeding near them; perhaps Lesser Scaup. The sun was getting close to the New Bedford skyline, low enough now that the surface of the water looked almost creamy white in places. Clouds moving in from the west. Overhead, a thousand black specks of starlings wheeled in synchronized flight; they started up the hundreds of gray and white pigeons who wheeled counterclockwise below them.

Back across the harbor via the north side of the bridge. A gaggle of gulls sat at the Fairhaven end of the bridge: Ringbills, Great Black-backed, Herring, and Bonaparte’s Gulls. A few Canda Geese, too. The gulls and geese didn’t like the looks of me, and most of them sprung into the air, screaming and splashing and flapping, gray and white and black against the black water. One yearling gull didn’t move, hunkered down on the dark gray pebbled beach, nearly invisible until it swayed ever so slightly. The gulls and geese settled down out on the water near a pair of black-and-white ducks: not Buffleheads, but probably Common Goldeneye.

It was good to see the wild ducks in the harbor; mostly I just see gulls, starlings, and pigeons. By the time I got back, it was getting pretty dark: the city streets, shades of black and gray, warmed here and there with red brick.