Ducks on ice

"The parallelism produced
 by their necks and bodies
 steering the same way
 gives the idea of order."

March 21.

At sunrise to Clamshell Hill.

River skimmed over at Willow Bay last night. Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter.  Look with glass and find  more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. 

There was an open space, eight or ten rods by one or two. At first all within a space of apparently less than a rod diameter. Soon one or two are moving about slowly. It is 6.30 a. m., the sun shining on them, but bitter cold.  How tough they are! 

I crawl on my stomach and get a near view of them, thirty rods off. At length they detect me and quack. Some get out upon the ice, and when I rise up all take to flight in a great straggling flock, which at a distance looks like crows, in no order.  Yet, when you see two or three  the parallelism produced by their necks and bodies steering the same way gives the idea of order. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1854

Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars"); March 22, 1854 ("Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together."); March 22, 1858 ("About forty black ducks, pretty close together, sometimes apparently in close single lines.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

Thirty ducks asleep

with heads on backs, motionless -

ice forms about them.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ducks on ice

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540321