CSI: Duck Pond

Yesterday, I had to arrive at work at 5PM, rather than 9PM... we were hosting an event at our main office and the guy who usually works 5PM-9PM had to work the event, basically making sure things went smoothly and locking up after the event caterers left. One of the day shift workers on site told me that there was a duck carcass on site, on the verge of a path that goes around our pond. Checking out the location he indicated, I noted with relief that the dead duck was a male mallard, rather than one of our resident wood ducks:

The culprit was one of our resident red-tailed hawks. While my co-worker didn't witness the murther, he was lucky enough to see the hawk feasting on the carcass. When it had finished eating the duck's prodigious flight muscles, it flew ever so silently off to perch in a nearby tree.

'Midst Mallards

I typically don't make New Year's resolutions, they tend to be vague and to stress people out. If I do make one, it's a very specific, very concrete thing- for instance, to do one-hundred pushups every weekday for a year (I actually saw this one through a few years back). This year might be the year I finally break down and buy a decent camera... something I've been kicking around almost as long as I've been blogging. The phone's camera is okay, good for capturing images spontaneously, but not really adequate to the task of serious photography. Case in point, there's a goregous male wood duck (Aix sponsa) in the middle of this scrum of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), but you'd be hard pressed to pick this blur out of all of the other blurs:

The fact that a pair of wood ducks is still on the property at this time of year has me simultaneously happy and concerned... I'm happy because I genuinely love these shy birds and am glad to have them around, and I'm concerned because THIS ISN'T NORMAL, it's one of those subtle hints that point towards a truth which is being obfuscated by bad industrialists, lazy media companies, and stupid consumers. As far as the birds go, they are lovely- the male is showy, the female extremely skittish, always the first to take wing with a high-pitched alarm call, sending the entire group of ducks into the air. I think her fears are a bit misplaced, I'm much less of a threat to her than those godawful mallards.

Seriously, though, I really need to get a good camera, and I have the funds to do so now... and I want to buy it before Vulgarmort takes to D.C., I don't want to contribute more to 'his' economy that I absolutely have to.

Post-Solstice Solace

Last summer, I had the great good fortune to visit one of the most supportive members of the bloggerhood, Thunder. On the door to his world-famous Cacapon Mountain hideaway, there is a sign reading WHEN THE WORLD BURDENS YOU SEEK THE SOLITUDE OF THE FOREST!

The last few days have been rough, me having learned of the deaths of two friends. Luckily, I work in a beautiful location, and though it is not heavily forested, it is a wonderful place in which to take refuge when the world burdens me (I'm really fortunate to have a job which tends to be a stress reliever rather than a source of stress). Today was a glorious sunny day, albeit a chilly one. Most of the snow from Friday's storm has melted and there are many signs of spring. I finally heard the welcome call of the red-winged blackbird, a surefire sign that spring has arrived. The robins (our American robins are large thrushes) have finally returned, and I saw a jaunty mockingnbird as well. I saw two male wood ducks, likely from last year's local brood, in our pond. There are black-headed scaups of uncertain provenance in the pond, likely mid-migration, and the hooded mergansers have returned to the ice-free waters. Perhaps most welcome of all (though I hate to play favorites), the killdeer, those comical noisy birds, so much like crazy windup toys, have returned. Watching the returning birds and listening to their calls is a surefire way to life one's sagging spirits.

Nature has a palliative power... when the world burdens you, take solace in the world.

The Handsome Drake

This year, I was ecstatic to note that a pair of wood ducks chose my principal worksite to raise a family. Longtime readers may recall that I am partial to the birds, which are often considered the handsomest of the North American waterfowl. I had noticed a couple of the ducks on the property last fall, probably mid-migration, and I was happy to see that we had a spring-to-fall presence of the ducks.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the drake foraging with a bunch of other ducks and geese. The wood ducks tend to be shy, so he led the other birds on a pell-mell run to the pond on site. He's the handsome bird on the left-hand side:

Ordinarily, the geese would linger on land, cropping grass, not fleeing unless one were to actively chase them. The handsome drake, though, is shy. I haven't seen much of him, more frequently coming across his gal pal and their ducklings. I think this winter, I may cobble together a nesting box to attract additional wood ducks to the site.

Drama in the Sky

This afternoon, I hauled my carcass to Tibbett's Brook Park for what passes for fresh air in the megalopolis and some sunshine (living at night isn't helping my complexion). In the course of rambling around the pond, I saw (gasp!) an osprey flying overhead:

I noticed something trailing from the bird's legs, which it was attempting to dislodge with a complicated set of aerial maneuvers. Thankfully, the bird was able to dislodge the thing, which turned out to be (yeah, you probably guessed it) a plastic bag:

The damn thing was too far from the shore to fish out of the pond. Thankfully, NYC, our big neighbor to the south, seems to be moving quickly toward forcing stores to charge ten cents per plastic bag, to reduce this waste that will outlive our nation (the Atlantic has its own floating garbage gyre now).

On a happy note, there is at least one osprey in Tibbett's Brook Park. At the mothership, the subject of DDT came up- DDT use led to severe declines in osprey populations. Seeing an osprey today was a happy coincidence.

Sadly, I missed the one shot which would have been best for this post. After its aerobatics to dislodge the plastic bag, the bird took a plunge into the water and emerged carrying what appeared to be a "liberated" goldfish (judging by the color) in its talons. Hopefully, the osprey will establish residency in the park... if that happens, I'll have to apologize to the wood ducks for not considering them my Tibbett's favorites anymore.

Battle of the Dinosaurs!

If I told you that I found a live-action video of a valiant mother dinosaur defending her young from couple of predatory dinosaurs, would you think I was nuts?

Well, after watching a video, courtesy of Tengrain, of baby wood ducks jumping out of a tree, I found a video of a mother mallard fighting off a couple of rapacious crows which were trying to make a meal out of her ducklings:





Of course, just as everyone knows that the burrow owl lives in a burrow in the ground, everyone knows that birds are maniraptoran dinosaurs. Now, work with me... pretend that you don't know the scale of the dinosaurs involved in this epic battle. Good, now pretend that it's a mother Edmontosaurus (ignore the fact that mamma duck is a saurischian, despite her hip shape) defending her young from a couple of tyrannosaurs. Voila! Battle of the dinosaurs!

Stephen Spielberg, eat your heart out!

Winter's Last Gasp?

Today, the final day of winter, temperatures have hit the low seventies (low twenties Celsius). We haven't had much of a winter at any rate, but today felt like a day in mid-May rather than mid-March. This being St. Joseph's Day, I walked to Artuso's Pastry Shop to get sfingi, then went to Tibbett's Brook Park, where I noted that the beautiful wood ducks (the prettiest of the North American waterfowl) have returned.

Yeah, it feels more like a late spring or early summer day, rather than the last day of winter, but global warming is not occurring. I know this because James Inhofe tells me so. Inhofe tells us that Scripture refutes the very notion of global climate change. As I recall, Chapter 4, verse 20 of the Book of Gasses reads:


Verily do I say to thee, sayeth The Lord, Carbon Monoxide hath no effect whatsoever on global temperature. Woe unto those who mocketh The Lord by measuring Carbon Monoxide Levels and extapolating climate models from such. The Lord shall strike such blasphemers most sorely with hail and cyclones, for they commit an abomination unto the Fossil Fuel Industry.


Yep, that's how I recall that Bibble passage, and who is any climate researcher to question me?