Late summer on the pond: kingfishers, dragonflies, and still water

By late August the pond holds heat in the afternoon and a hard, quiet light in the morning. Cattails along the south and west margins have gone to seed. The water is low enough that the small wooded peninsula in the middle of the lake reads clearly from the aerial, and from the shore it looks almost like an island.

Belted kingfishers have been the most vocal residents. A pair — or at least two birds using the same hunting circuit — work the open water from dead snags. The call is the familiar dry rattle of Megaceryle alcyon, the species that belongs to every lowland pond in the Puget Sound basin that still has fish small enough to dive for. Please leave those snags standing. They are hunting perches, and they are part of the pond’s furniture.

Dragonflies have been thick over the lily pads: darners cruising the open water, skimmers working the cattail edge. Wood ducks still drop in at first light. A great blue heron has been using the north shallows on still mornings.

Owners walking the shoreline: stay on established paths, keep dogs under control near the water, and do not cut vegetation without a conversation among the thirteen. The late-summer pond looks sleepy. It is not. It is storing the year.