The Mallards That We Love

This winter was the snowiest we have seen in New England in decades. Eventually Spring comes even to New England, in fits and starts, which means that eventually the solid water starts to turn to liquid water, and for us, that has come to mean one wonderful thing: ducks sharing our property! We have had duck neighbors in Springs past, but they are more abundant now than before, and more familiar: we have been out there "feeding" them all kinds of awful bread and bread-like substances. "Feeding" goes into quotation marks because on our first mission to the edge of the new mini-pond, the ducks at first came nowhere near us, but we threw Lavash bread and similar unconventional feed in their direction all the same. At that point, Ian opined that if we were to send food in their direction, that would teach them to trust us, and then eventually they would come closer, and to my jaded adult astonishment, he was quite correct.

During one of the feeding forays, Ian was discussing the arrival of our web-footed friends from Florida and other livable-year-round places in the vicinity, and it turned out that when he first saw them overhead, he couldn't contain his joy:

"Daniel and I actually saw them fly over our house, and I hugged him, because I was happy to see them come back."

(March, 2011)