Twenty Feet

This blog originates on the banks of the Atchafalaya River, in Louisiana. It proposes to share the things that happen on and by the river as the seasons progress. As the river changes from quiet, warm, slow flow to rises of eighteen feet or more, there are changes in the lives of the birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles that use the river. And the mood of the river changes with the seasons. I propose to note and comment on these things.
I transitioned a few years ago from a career as a water-pollution control biologist. I want to do this blog to stay in touch with a world outside my everyday surroundings, whatever they may be. I like open-minded company and the discussion of ideas. Photo by Brad Moon.

guarantee a good market for sugar for a long time. The females are showing rounded bellies that hide one or two eggs ready for laying. People ask about the possessiveness that some of these little birds exhibit. If there are four or five trying to use the feeder at the same time, the aggressive ones just seem to give up. “Oh well” almost fits the situation.
It is the idea of wood ducks, rather than the reality of them. When you stand out on the river at first daylight, they fly up and down the river – sometimes landing in a tall tree, sometimes just swooping low to the water and then high over the trees – always making that wheep-wheep call that so much identifies them. At times like that you can believe in the idea of something that otherwise we think of only in physical terms.
Freedom is an idea, a thought, not physical.
As they land up in the trees, the ducks fly in the face of all we are taught to believe about ducks. Ducks land in water, not in trees. Except that wood ducks do land in trees. So the idea that these are different from the ordinary comes to mind, these animals that deviate from expectations. So maybe it’s ok to be different, we think. The idea of difference being something to be glad for is an idea that wood ducks bring to us, I think.
p there in that dead willow tree, and we have been given the chance to appreciate it. The fact that we can look and smile at this indistinct image , knowing that the ducks are just as meaningful to us as they were in the close-up image I spoke about before, is what I mean by the idea of something.
It rained on the river this morning. Here are four of the drops.
nd the main virtue to an aluminum one, is the knees that surround cypress trees. If you come up on a knee in a wooden boat it can come up through the floor and say “Hi” very easily, unbelievably easily. With aluminum, mostly it won’t do that.