Better Than Blue Suede Shoes

A flock of Ruddy Ducks have amassed in the small cove in front of our house.  Last week there were one or two males.  Today I counted twenty.  The Ruddy Duck has to be on your "must see" list, even if you  are otherwise uninterested in birds.  Look for the males over the next six weeks as they come into full breeding plumage.  They have bright blue bills.  I have no idea what evolutionary advantage accrued to individuals with this trait.  In the marshes and ponds where Ruddies mingle with dozens of other ducks and geese, they alone sport a blue bill.   And only during mating season.

Soon you will see those splendid skeins of waterfowl flying north and heralding spring.  This sight has fascinated for centuries.  On the walls and temples of the Nile, ancient artists stylized ducks and geese.  Zeus became a swan for Leda. Waterfowl are prized for their down which remains warm and dry under their thick waterproof feathers.  Some have elaborate courtship displays.  Most have blunt bills with a hard tip, and tongues with serration that allows them to filter fine food particles from water or mud.  Generally, the males are flashy and the females a drab brown that disguises them as they incubate their eggs in their marshy nests.  Look for these birds in a wetland near you.  And watch for a small, round duck with a very stiff tail, flying low with rapid wing beats.  Get a good look.  If his bill is blue, it is a Ruddy Duck dressed for action.

de Tocqueville On Democracy

This short essay by Michael Barone is worth reading.  Michael Barone is a political analyst.  Conservative.  If you are not familiar with Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted by Barone, read about him here http://www.tocqueville.org/chap1.htm

Go Fish

The dry rattle call of the Belted Kingfisher is unmistakable.  Our house is on the shore of a small lake - a pond really. Yesterday I heard that call and spotted the bird in a scrub willow.  Any visit from a Kingfisher is welcome.  This solitary bird occupies all but the most frozen north of the North American continent.  Winters in Mexico, summers in the north country even out on the taiga and tundra of Canada and Alaska.  Kingfishers burrow into muddy or gravel banks for their nest. Their tunnel can extend as much as 8 feet, sloping upward from the entrance hole.  I especially like that the female Belted Kingfisher has brighter plumage than the male, one of only a few species in which fashion is feminine.  My visitor was a girl.  She watched, waited and dove, making her rattling cry as she launched.  You go girl.