Winter on the river

Surprisingly, winter on the Bass River is busy. Not with boaters and bathers but rather with loons, seals, small arctic ducks and terns.

I find it amazing that loons spend the summer in the Rangeley Lakes of Maine and northern-most lakes of New Hampshire and then come to the Bass River for the “mild” winter. Granted the water is still mostly open here in winter, unlike the lakes, but it is still very cold and windy. Oh well, they must be pretty tough.

The gray and harbor seals from Monomoy Island off Chatham find their way here in winter to catch fish coming and going with the tides at the mouth of the river. I watched one last winter with a big flounder in his mouth, flip the fish until it was head down and then swallow it whole!

The little, bright black and white arctic ducks never stop diving. I should think they would freeze solid after the first dive but they shake off the water and start again. They bob over whitecaps and steep waves like corks then fly back against the tide to drift and dive again with the tide.

Usually someone will leave an old boat on a mooring over the winter, sort of abandoned. I watch as the winds eventually tear to shreds whatever canvas remains and the hull begins to settle in the stormy water. I speculate as to what may have happened to cause the boat to still be on its mooring. Was the owner called away on a top-secret mission before he had time to tend to his beloved old boat? Did he fall on such hard times financially that he couldn’t afford to drag the old girl up a ramp to shore for the season? Or is he actually still aboard, living out the winter in isolation, banned from civilization for his transgressions?

Or did some old fella simply forget the damned thing?