redd
rhymes with "bed"
A spawning nest built by a female salmon or trout in the gravel bed of a river. She turns on her side and beats her tail against the bottom, excavating a shallow depression into which she deposits her eggs. The male fertilizes them, and she covers the eggs with gravel swept from upstream. A single redd can be two to ten feet long and contain thousands of eggs. It is the architecture of a species' continuity, built and abandoned in the same day.
Etymology
Scots dialect, from an old word meaning "to put in order, to tidy, to clear." The female salmon is tidying the riverbed — clearing it, ordering it — for the eggs.
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