Common Birds 51 - Mallards

Monday, November 20

It’s duck season!

Through the bare branches and biting wind every pond, lake, and harbor calls to me. Here there be ducks.

I had an outstanding duck day on Saturday. Amelia, our son, and I went to a lake right in Haverhill to hike, take pictures, and look for ducks. This fall and winter my major duck goal was seeing a ruddy duck. For reasons I don’t understand, ruddy ducks, which mostly live in Mexico and the American Southwest, are common in Haverhill and only Haverhill. Go up or down river a few miles and the chances of seeing one plummets. There’s a particular corner of the lake where the ducks prefer to gather, on the west side of the lake where there isn’t space for the wind to build up wave: black and white ring-necked ducks, the flashing white headdresses of male hooded mergansers, the black bobbing heads of American coots (which aren’t actually ducks), and the tiny white bobbers which are buffleheads. As we approached, I saw three very small diving ducks by the shore. I thought they might be pied-billed grebes (also not ducks) because of the size. Then, I got a closer look and could make out their broad, flat bills - ruddy ducks! I couldn’t believe how small they were! They’re powerfully cute. While Amelia played with the setting on her new camera, I reveled in the nearness and newness of the ruddy ducks. Our son, unimpressed or just tired, fell asleep. 

Later, about mile down the trail there’s a marshy area, and I spotted more ducks hanging out with a pair of mute swans and a single Canada goose. I assumed they were mallards but through my monocular I saw the tell tale blaze of iridescent green that wraps around the back of an American wigeon’s head. Two firsts in a single day!

So I was feeling hot coming into today. Work has been slow leading up to Thanksgiving and the river was back up, so I decided to go on a longer walk. A good way past the pond there’s a small strip of land which sections off a shallow inlet from the rest of the river: a great place for ducks to rest. Who knows, if my luck held I might even see a Barrow’s goldeneye or a greater scaup. November might be my favorite month for a long walk. The nip of the air drives a vigorous pace and before long I can take off my gloves, unzip my jacket, and enjoy the tossing wind. The river is choppy with the same wind to my left. The sun is low on my right, outlining the trees in gold. A downy woodpecker taps just off of the trail, but I keep on. The path narrows working its way to the edge of the bank, brush casts a canopy of sticks low over my head. Then I see scintillating light on my right: the inlet. My pace slows. If Barrow’s goldeneyes are like common goldeneyes then they’re quick to take flight. A spreading wake points to a living creature on the surface of the inlet. I freeze, following the wake’s arrow to its apex - a mallard! All this way and I see a flock of mallards! I want to laugh but no point in scaring them off.

Mallards are amazingly powerful. They, by their overwhelming ubiquity, have made all ducks invisible. Only by dedicated attention and obscure learning may this veil be pierced. I’ve seen people walk past even the rarest ducks without noticing them at all, let alone noticing that they don’t really look like “ducks”, or that they aren’t actually ducks at all. We were at a lighthouse yesterday and literally hundreds of black scooters, an ocean going duck, covered the waves in their dark forms, invisible because people don’t know that ducks live in the ocean. I didn’t know until a year ago. Mallard, like robins, are so present they disappear, despite being one of North America's most colorful ducks. I was thrilled by the American wigeon’s green earmuffs, as if the entire head of the male mallard wasn’t wrapped in the same iridescence, brilliant green which becomes blue, even purple in the right light. Blue leaps from their wings when they fly. When they quack, they sound exactly like you expect them to sound, and I find this immensely satisfying. But they are background noise, and likewise effortlessly disappear from our consciousness, winking out of our perceived reality and pulling all other ducks and a number of non-ducks with them into the teeming void between reality and our perception. 

So don’t let them deceive you. When you are out, look for ducks. When you see a duck, pay attention - keep awake! Honestly, it will probably be a mallard, but mallards are still beautiful. But if it’s not a mallard, you are presented with an invitation into the invisible world of duck season.