Defending the Pond

a colonial tale

We don’t see her fly in. She is just there, floating serenely on the pond. Who is she? A soft-looking crest of light brown feathers crowns her.

Had I not wished to name her, know her, had I not looked her up on the internet, I could have watched her to my heart’s content. I could have photographed her. I could have gradually learned, by observation, what birding websites taught me vicariously.

Pond Without Duck, c. harmon

She is a female hooded merganser. Her slender serrated pointed bill is designed for catching fish; mergansers are the only North American ducks which specialize in eating fish.

Our forty x fifty foot pond, where she is floating, has several large and many tiny fish drowsing under a rock in its middle. They are in torpor for the winter. She senses this. She has come for a meal.

Mergansers are strong swimmers and have excellent underwater vision. They change their eyes to improve their underwater refractive vision, and have an extra eyelid, a transparent nictitating membrane, which helps protect their eyes during swimming. Our wee fish won’t stand a chance.

As we watch I describe this to my husband, who is very fond of “our fish”, and to my daughter, who is visiting. I muse that if this were a natural pond we would be delighted by her presence. If we lived on a lake-shore we would cheer her on. But our pond is a large constructed pond with a rubber liner. We are in the privileged position of enjoying this environment, which we have created and which is indeed beautiful, but is not wild. We feel obliged to chase away racoons, close gates against deer and bear, and chase off predatory birds to protect ‘our’ flowering plants. And the pears in autumn. And the fish we inherited from a previous owner.

My daughter comments, “This is the whole situation, right here.” She is right. We are privileged humans living in a constructed oasis. We interact with other creatures who live in the wild. We live on their territory

The pond was built with the house in 1993. When we moved here, in 2020, the liner was ruined: full of holes and leaking. The shrubs around the pond were overgrown and competed for light. Three years ago, in the midst of a summer drought, we redid the pond.

First, we removed mature shrubs from its perimeter leaving a barren landscape backed by cedar trees. The pond-water was pumped into two inflatable wading pools. Garden assistants in waders netted the fish and put them in the pools. We counted twenty-eight full grown fish: koi and koi-goldfish hybrids, goldfish, a trout. They had likely lived there since 1993. No doubt there were originally many more fish.

A layer of silt was removed from the liner with wheel barrows and dumped in the yard to become compost. The liner was cut into pieces and removed. Nine workers—eight men and one woman, rolled the new liner into place, draping it around the edges of the pond then the water and fish were returned to the pond. Over time the edges of the liner were secured with boulders and new plantings were established.

We lost some fish the first year. Beautiful white and gold creatures floated on the surface of the water the next spring. The trout died next. Then I watched a kingfisher dive from a branch in the Japanese snowbell tree and capture one of our two mature goldfish. Racoons also captured fish. The one remaining large koi, who my husband named Stripe for the gold stripe running down their back, surprised us by laying eggs.

Now the population of the pond is a very few large fish and many grey or black minnows with odd flashes of gold. Perfect food for this merganser who is the most serious threat our small fish have yet faced.

My friend, who lives on Saltspring Island, tells me of a bay on that island, Xwaaqw’um, in the Hul’q’umi’num’ language, meaning “female merganser duck place”. Hul’q’umi’num’ speaking people accessed this area for food, including merganser ducks, which were netted and speared, with other waterfowl, during summer and autumn months. Merganser duck feathers are important in indigenous ceremonial dance regalia. (Salt Springs Archives, Indigenous Place Names of Salt Spring Island ).

I have only had that initial sighting of her, as my husband has been determinedly defending our fish ever since. He tosses pebbles in her proximity to scare her off. “I don’t throw then at her”, he says. She has become so wary of humans she flies off as soon as one moves in her vicinity. He sets up his phone as a security camara, its screen visible even in the darkness of early evening. “I think she is sneaky”, he says.

The first floater we find is our last surviving goldfish. Like with the kingfisher, this fish is too large for her to swallow but not too large to attack.

She is remarkably persistent, which makes me wonder if she is planning to nest nearby. Mergansers nest in tree cavities. We are surrounded by trees: cedar, fir, alder, pine, and more. Hooded mergansers lay from six to thirteen eggs, sometimes in the nests of other birds. They climb trees. Their babies are independent within one day of hatching and can run, to escape predators, on the surface of the water.

Why is she alone? Mergansers usually flock, floating serenely on water for much of the day. Is she alone because she is not part of a flock, doesn’t have a secure place to fish, other than our pond? Has she lost her mate?

Why is she alone?

What will we do if she finds a mate, hatches thirteen ducklings and leads them to our pond?

My husband says, “we’ll have to put a curse upon her feathers”, but I know he doesn’t mean it.

Will we continue to protect our fenced world or will we open our arms to them? Will we become wilder?