Quack

A few feet from our house there is a large duck pond. All year it’s home to a handful of ducks and geese. But for several weeks in the springtime and again in the fall, it’s a stopping place for hundreds, perhaps thousands of migrating Canada geese. They show up in groups of a dozen or more around sunset, flying in V formation. They circle the pond once or twice and come in for a graceful landing on the water. Sometimes they stay a single night and leave at daybreak. Occasionally they’re there for a day or two, resting and catching a bite to eat before they take off again. I love to listen to their steady crescendo as they work up their courage for another day’s flight. I’ve read that they’re quicker to leave the frigid north in autumn than they are to head back in the spring. I can certainly relate.