It’s a blustery day. Snow crosses the yard in sheets, acts like smoke as it curls around homes. The sky can’t make up its mind if it wants to be grey or blue or cloudless, keeps switching.
The ducks, always serious about food, are waging war with the wind. When it subsides, they hustle into the yard and scoop up cracked corn. When the wind is scuttling in swirls of snow, the ducks huddle. They put their feet into their feathers and their beaks under their wings, neatly folded packages of feathers. They sit facing the wind and snow.
We’ve been out twice to throw food into the falling snow for them. They’ve been appreciative, have eaten. Now they snuggle into the storm, snow blowing around and between them as they wait for this blustery day to end.
Photos are mine.
4 comments:
This is so cool that you have ducks hanging around in your back yard.. I think you two are permanently adopted by them now.. When I was young I had a male and female Mallard duck as pets.. the mother duck sat and sat forever on her eggs but finally hatched a sweet small troupe of them... unbeknownst to us late in the barn, the father duck was grabbing the babies and dunking them in the water bucket and drowning them.. he did a few in before we discovered what was going on.. We couldn't believe it.. we actually caught him in the act.. we never could figure out why he would have done such a thing.. strange huh?
meanwhile here the mallards are enjoying the beginning of mild spring weather!
Hi Gwen,
The drowning behaviour is strange, some kind of survival, father vs. ducklings perhaps. Glad you saved some of them. Our ducks are not tame enough to come very close to us, which is just as well for them. They do like to keep an eye on Gary when he's out in the yard. They equate him with food.
Hi CGP,
I envy you the springtime. Though this winter has been easier than last, it is still some weeks before spring will appear.
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