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Goldeneye duck looking like a loonYesterday a friend of mine who used to live in Toronto but who now lives in a crooked little house on the edge of the Pacific ocean got into a conversation with my son, who used to live in the same crooked little house, about a flock of birds that have been floating just offshore for several weeks. My friend was almost certain that these birds were loons (he is a big fan of loons) but my son, who observed a similar flock in the same location last winter, had done some research and decided these birds were goldeneye ducks.
Disappointing to my friend but this led us to the Audubon website and this extraordinary sentence:
"The Golden-eye Ducks manifest a propensity to adhere to a place which they find productive, and that to a most extraordinary degree."
Further down in the article we read: "About four o’clock, as I was returning, with a fine Turkey-cock slung to my back, I met the same party, who told me that, "sure enough," the Ducks were at the ford, and I was likely to have "a good crack at them."
Although no credit is given, these sentences must have come from John James Audobon himself, a man who committed himself to find and paint all the birds of North America. Although I am not as devoted to birds as Audubon was, in Grade 5 I was president of the Audobon Society at my school.
