This reminds me of a Winter afternoon perhaps twenty years ago, when the mallards had settled onto a neighbor' lake in numbers like that. None of us had seen such abundance---they were like huge rafts of brown flotsam on an after-storm tide, as far as we could see.
The hunters were walking the edge, trying to get near enough to the flock to set them flying.
The ducks would take off in unison like a school of fish, skittering and swimming away in great droves, and when they DID "get up" they filled the sky.
I got quickly back into the car, turned on loud music, and looked out over the barren landscape of the fields for a long time, huddling my ears into my collar and not looking toward the pond again.
This reminds me of a Winter afternoon perhaps twenty years ago, when the mallards had settled onto a neighbor' lake in numbers like that. None of us had seen such abundance---they were like huge rafts of brown flotsam on an after-storm tide, as far as we could see.
ReplyDeleteThe hunters were walking the edge, trying to get near enough to the flock to set them flying.
The ducks would take off in unison like a school of fish, skittering and swimming away in great droves, and when they DID "get up" they filled the sky.
I got quickly back into the car, turned on loud music, and looked out over the barren landscape of the fields for a long time, huddling my ears into my collar and not looking toward the pond again.