I Am Not A Birder

That’s not to say that I don’t like birds.  I do.  I like birds very much. Nothing is more majestic than a great blue heron.  Or an American eagle.  Or even a wee hummingbird.  But birds fly into view for nano-seconds and then they’re gone. Poof! Just like that. They don’t give you a chance to form real connections with them.

The little merganser ducks, on the other hand, beg for your interest and attention.  They all but send you an invitation to join their party.

The mergansers tend to arrive in South Carolina just before Thanksgiving and they leave again in early March.  We have a family who faithfully return to a spot just down the Sound from us. 

Mergansers, if you don’t already know, always do everything, and I mean absolutely everything, in pairs.  Where there is one, there will always be another.  Where there are three, there are surely four.  And so on.  

I may spend a little too much time watching those little ducks bob and weave, fish and play, and communicate with each other in ways we can’t understand.   I also may occasionally feel a bit like Christina in Andrew’s Wyeth’s famous painting.

But they always put a smile on my face.  And that’s always worth the time invested.