I’m talking about luck, people (although, admittedly my mind may still be in the gutter after that burlesque show).
We had a day recently where sun/weekend/camera/family all combined, and the Let the Dog in! household went out, to our local park, Battle Point Park. An appropriate name given what happens with your child when it’s time to go….
Let the bird edufikationalism begin!
Many of these ducks are winter visitors to the Puget Sound area and will soon be taking off for….some place to screw around to make baby ducks Canada or at least that pond by that mall north of Seattle.
We’ll start with the basics: Mallard.
A handsome enough fellow, kinda dapper-looking with that bright green head, but not too unusual. As a child I, personally, used to “feed da ducks” back home in Texas. These guys seem to live anywhere, the cockroach of ducks. They are the origin of almost every domestic duck. That’s a kind of fowl monopoly, isn’t it, not to be confused with another kind of foul monopoly, like Exxon or Perez Hilton.
Check out his gal pal:
Now them’s some hot breast feathers, eh?
Here’s one you may not know: American Wigeon (not to be confused with the Eurasian Wigeon, which waits in long lines for bread crumbs and worries about the state of the euro). These guys paddle along, all cool-like.
Well, I should say, at least we’re not Mallards.
Now we come to a new guy (for me, anyway): Ring-necked Duck.
He has a problem. Someone obviously named him without looking at him. Where’s the RING?? Beats me. If that stupid summer intern (or whoever was not being paid for a duck inventory) had seen him, they might’ve called him Spats-face Duck. But he does dive and dabble, so he can’t be all bad.
Here, we come to a certain duck I knew from Alaskan summers: Bufflehead.
Small, but dramatic, he’s hard to miss in a crowd. While other ducks are skimming the surface, he’s a diver and not afraid to show it. He might be the James Bond of ducks.
Not sure what part of him that is, but it’s cute, yes? The wife watches: Haven’t you had enough? Don’t you dive when I’m talking to you!
Finally, we have what I can only guess is the butt of many quack-up jokes: Northern Shoveler.
Check out that ridiculous beak. Amazing he can lift his head. But he puts it to good use foraging across the water’s surface. And, well, you know what they say about big beaks….
Maybe I shouldn’t tease the Shoveler. Maybe he’s the Cyrano of ducks, a romantic at heart, disadvantaged by an unfortunate evolutionary twist. You know, like Richard Lewis.
Are you getting out and about where you live? Enjoying the shift into spring?
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