8 Union Bay 



carry the white sails of fast-moving pleasure boats. Power 

 boats often drag water skiers. Sometimes a tanker, airport 

 bound, moves along. It is a pleasing sight, seldom without 

 activity. There is nothing about it to indicate that wildlife 

 can be seen by those who are curious enough to look for it. 



And yet the wildlife has managed to adjust itself to this 

 activity. There are few quiet days in the history of the place. 

 Each season has its guests which come at quite fixed times, 

 stay for definite periods, and are replaced by others when 

 they leave. Winter transients and regulars, spring migrants, 

 summer residents, fall visitors, and all-season guests provide 

 a constant and impressive change of population. 



The life which one sees in this marsh is mostly bird life, 

 with now and then a beaver, a muskrat, a mink, or an otter 

 which has stopped for a few days while on its tour of the 

 streams. Just animal life? Yes, just animal life, but birds and 

 mammals as interesting as people so that, when I pick an 

 individual from among them as a radio announcer with a 

 "roving mike" might select a man from a crowd, I usually 

 unravel a story that holds every element of drama. 



I have been visiting the area since a boy in high school, 

 so that now I know it as I know the neighborhood about my 

 house— the kind of neighbors, what they do, something of 

 when they come and go, and a little of the happiness and 

 difficulties which beset them. It is of these aspects of the 

 marsh which I propose to write. 



