Out on Wrightsville for couple hours and up into the marshy shallows of the North Branch inlet, where Joe Pye Weed brightens the edges. A group of young common mergansers shakes their wings and heads, diving,
preening, and making some little chortling noises to one another, with no regard for human traffic. A couple of osprey pass overhead and a few mallards are doing flight runs back and forth. We drift along until a bank of clouds turns a summer afternoon into autumn, and we hurry back to the landing and our warm car.
