The river was high and bronze this morning, under a sky alternating thick silver with racing, wispy charcoal. In brief breaks of actual sunshine, one or another building on the opposite shore would suddenly light up as though it were Queen for a Day.

The pilings south of my bench were completely underwater, a host of Brant geese swimming around waiting for their moss breakfast to re-emerge.

At the piling field north of me, for some reason the pilings were cut off higher above the water line. A young cormorant stood there and cleaned his feathers on a piling very close in. He wasn't fifteen feet from the walkway and, though not oblivious -- he stopped and stared warily at someone who'd stopped to stare at him -- he didn't seem particularly bothered by the joggers, dogwalkers, or even the park workers in their putting little buggy. I saw him there a few days ago, too. He's young, and probably wondering why none of the other cormorants hang out here, in this good fishing ground. He has a point. We'll see over the next few weeks if he stakes this end of the piling field out as his own, or yields to peer pressure and starts hanging around farther from shore.