And it's Mr. Sibley's fault. I can now tell you that the pair of geese I saw yesterday, floating closer to shore than the Canada geese we usually have around here -- the ones everyone has, pretty much, which are "Common" Canada geese -- are Richardson's geese, not rare but newcomers to this part of the river, probably just passing through, or wintering over until it's time to go back to, well, Canada. And I can tell you that at low tide this morning, the line of geese nibbling barnacles off the seawall, looking for all the world like horses at a trough except for the way they were bobbing up and down, are Brants, but not the rare black Brant. I also saw a female bufflehead, alone, also close to the wall. Buffleheads are a riot because they always look like they have a schedule to keep. She dove, popped up, swam very busily north, dove again, and kept at it, making a beeline north as though she had some particular place to go and a time she had to be there and she was grabbing breakfast on the run. Or rather, on the paddle. I don't know if she's the female of the pair who were hanging around a few weeks ago with a single male, or if she's on her own. Buffleheads seem pretty independent, though, as opposed to, say, mallards, who quack nervously if they lose sight of each other -- so maybe she just decided it was time to fly south, and picked up and left.