Fed by a series of winter storms, the local park’s seasonal pond has made its annual reappearance and now dozens of ducks, alerted by their innate pond-recognition software, have descended to take up residence.
I pause on my daily walk to observe them going about their ducky business, gliding and head-dunking and quacking in entertainingly Disneyesque fashion.
“Not enough meat on them yet!” shouts a neighbor as he cycles past, and we exchange the brief back-and-forth that can help a community cohere, no matter the outcome of the last election, but as he disappears uphill, I drift back into my solitary avian-regarding reverie.
I can scarcely tell a seagull from a swan, so I certainly have no idea whether sudden outbursts of wing-flap squalling and outrage are triggered by disagreements over food, habitat, or marital infidelity, but I’m perfectly happy to watch the show.
In a few weeks, if past years are any guide, there will be fluffy flotillas of cartoon-cute ducklings frantically trying to follow their imperious mothers, and I will be a pondside onlooker, oddly but unquestionably soothed by the scene, at least momentarily able to accept what is, without having to ask why.
Iain Macdonald
This article appears in Saving the Sea Otter.