Very cold today by the river, but not like yesterday. Yesterday, a wild north wind absolutely shredded the surface of the rough, high water, froze everyone's faces, and drove all the waterbirds into hiding. Today, the entire flock of about ninety Brant geese, which for some unnaccountable reason are still hanging around together, flew upriver against the wind, very low, and settled on the water right in front of me. Ten minutes later they all lifted off again, half going north and half returning south. Except, I noticed when it was all over, for one, who'd apparently decided that whatever reason they'd had for coming to this stretch of river was still valid. He swam into the piling field, but the water was too high for any good eating to be exposed. So he kept swimming south, quacking, looking for the others. Long before he reached the pier they'd vanished behind, the half of the flock that hard flown north zoomed back over his head, also quacking. He lifted off into the wind, spun around to join them, and a few moments later all ninety of them were back where they'd come from between the two piers to the south of my bench.

I don't know why everyone's been saying flying home's going to be difficult this Christmas season.