Mirabile dictu: it’s turned warm today, and I went down to the pond just in case. . And there I found a pair of mallards: a lovely female and her handsome boyfriend, who seemed to be getting along quite well. Sadly, I couldn’t get close enough to the hen mallard to see if it was Honey (I suspect it wasn’t, as she didn’t respond when I whistled. However, she could have been engrossed in her amours.)
Had I gotten close enough, I could have inspected her beak for its telltale stippling. At any rate, here’s the pair, who probably just stopped by for a rest on their migrations.
I will, of course, keep checking to see if it’s my beloved Honey. I was hoping that it was her, and that she had brought her boyfriend for inspection by Uncle Jerry.
We have several ducks, mostly Mallards in the pond around our urban area. I will have to see this winter but I think they stay here nearly all year round. Lots of Canadian geese as well.
They are Canada geese.
Picky. Since they are found in every state I am starting to wonder? Someone will want to build a wall.
Ha ha. It will have to be a mighty high wall.
There are reports – I forget the details – of some geese being seen flying a thousand-odd feet above the Chomolungma (Everest) mountain massif. I forget if it was on a hot air balloon flight, or the mid-1930s biplane flight over the massif which got the first photos of the southern approaches through Nepal.
The altitude physiologists pay a lot of attention to such reports. With a human barely able to function in the aptly-named “Death Zone”, the ability to sustain flight for considerable distances across the Himalayas is tempting.
Every time I see someone talking about terraforming Mars, I think of the adaptations that will need to be incorporated from birds into humans to acquire the necessary performance. Then about ten times more to approach the conditions of Mar’s atmosphere.
Is it still ok to call mayflies “Canadian soldiers”?
Ooooo.
I have never heard mayflies called that before and I read a lot about entomology! Live & learn. 😀
I worry about systematic duck racism, there seems to be a lot of Mallard supremacy in the names: “Common Eider Duck” or “Lesser Whistling-Duck”, and worst of all “Smew”. Better get the The Wellesley News on it.
🙂
I think this is a clear case of “duckism”.
You’ll be glad to hear that the Oldsquaw has been renamed the Long-tailed Duck.
‘Uncle Jerry’ – love it.
When PCC(E) gets a Bengal, all the posts will be about it I bet.
Will the presence of a keyboard-mounted Bengal increase or decrease the number of typos?
“Sadly, I couldn’t get close enough to the hen mallard to see if it was Honey (I suspect it wasn’t, as she didn’t respond when I whistled.”
F’r Pete’s sake, she’s in the middle of a hot date and you expect her to answer you, her ex?
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry….
How sweet!
There, there… you sound like you’re in need of a Honey fix, Dr. C.