Birds everywhere

Went for a walk in the Fill to wake up.  Head had been about to hit my desk in drowsiness.  Made my down through columns of swirling gnats (someday I'll find out why they do that.)  First encounter: a young heron:  missing the long, fancy chest feathers, and the head ones.  Seems to be possibly molting, and picking at it's feathers.  It almost looked shaved.  Kinda' endearing.  I talk to it, it looks at me.  I'm not carrying a camera.  I leave and walk about 100 feet further up the road, heron flies over and lands on a log in front of me and looks at me.  We contemplate one another and then I continue down the road, and the heron walks down the length of the log.  Intriguing.  Further along a neck stretches above the grasses to look at me, female mallard, she has ducklings, bright yellow.

The cormorants vocally and physically jockey for position on the island, knocking the geese and each other off of the logs.  Very aggressive.  Next up, couple of wood ducks swim past on the canal.  Smaller birds chatter and flit between the trees, so many I can't keep track.  A hawk practices soaring, rising higher and higher until it disappears from my view, crows are disinterested and let it be.  Feral apple trees in full bloom, the air both sweet and resin-y from the combination of flowers and cottonwood trees.

Walking back, I pass a flicker, soon joined by two others, each of them taking turns leaping from one tree to the other and making that "wakka-wakka" sound (as my sister calls it.)

Seems like a good day to be a bird.