Brock Hutchins slid out of the front seat of his four-wheel drive and walked a few yards down a snow-crusted gravel road, casting about with the focus of a shaman leading a hunt. Placing a knuckle between his lips, Hutchins lifted his head and mimicked a bird call as if conjuring life out of the overcast sky.

The front that passed through the week before Thanksgiving brought the first waterfowl fallout of the season to Lake Junaluska. I passed by on Thursday afternoon (11/17) and observed one snow goose with a small group of Canadian geese. Friday afternoon I returned for a longer look and found one gadwall in the back of the lake near the newly designed wetlands; a number of hooded mergansers in the same area; numerous American coots there and all around the lake; a double-crested cormorant sunning itself on the little island beneath the osprey platform; and a wood duck near the entrance road off US 19. There were a couple of pied-billed grebes around the lake. A small raft in the middle of the lake contained American wigeon, ring-billed ducks and lesser scaup. A group of bufflehead were also out in the middle of the lake along with one horned grebe.