Notes:
- As I was driving out of the parking lot, I took one last glance to my right. What is that!?!
- DK @ Daybreak. Cove Island Park. May 12, 2021. 5:59 to 6:06 am.
Tag: babies
T.G.I.F.: Running. With Mother Goose (3).
4:48 a.m. 8 hours of sleep. Rested.
I jump out of bed. Dress. Gear up.
It’s 5:04 a.m., and I’m out the door. Running. With Mother Goose. (Again.) 9th consecutive day pulled outside by The Call of the Wild.
44° F, feels like 42° F. No wind. No traffic. Dark. Full moon beams from up above. Jenny Offill: “The moonlight through the windshield. No one talks.”
Same route. Down the hill. Around the corner. Down the street to U.S. 1.
There, up ahead, silhouetted under the street lamp, is the Masked Woman. 5:09 a.m. Can’t be her. No chance. She hustles across the street. I glare at her. You better make way for me Lady. She says nothing, but sweeps both hands up to cover her face. It’s going to be a good day.
I run.
Down U.S. 1. I work my way around the construction, crossing the bridge, the highway and into The Cove.
The same pair of geese stand at the entrance, that’s them in the photo above.
I pause for a moment to snap the shot, and keep moving, pulled forward towards the main performance.
The same acceleration of heartbeat.
The same anticipation.
Continue reading “T.G.I.F.: Running. With Mother Goose (3).”
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
Where she goes, they follow. All 76 of them… She’s the Mom of the Year.
Where she goes, they follow. All 76 of them. A female duck in Minnesota has about six dozen ducklings in her care, a remarkable image that an amateur wildlife photographer captured on a recent trip to Lake Bemidji, about 150 miles northwest of Duluth, Minn.
“It was mind blowing,” the photographer, Brent Cizek, said in an interview. “I didn’t know that a duck could care for that many chicks.” It’s not unusual to see many ducklings gathered together. Some 20 or 30 have been reported with a single hen. But 70-plus? “It’s an extraordinary sighting,” said Richard O. Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University…
Mr. Cizek said he first stumbled upon the brood in late June, when he headed out to the local lake in an eight-foot plastic boat he bought to fuel his outdoor photography. He said he wasn’t expecting to take many pictures that day — he brought one camera and one lens — but then he saw the duck and her babies.
He began snapping photos while trying to steer in choppy water. He rushed home to look at his camera roll, he said, and found that only one image turned out: the duck, who is being called Mama, blazing the way for the long line of ducklings in her wake.
“It kind of compels you just to look and wonder: How?” Mr. Cizek said. “How did this happen? How is this mom taking care of all of these ducklings? She just looks really proud and stoic in the photo.” Continue reading “Where she goes, they follow. All 76 of them… She’s the Mom of the Year.”
