The cloudless morning sky, bleached pale blue by a brilliant sun, becomes a hazy blue-gray at the horizon, where New Jersey divides it from the royal blue Hudson River. A southerly breeze, wafting a hint of sea scent, acts as an antidote to the early heat of the day, cooling my skin and freshening my spirits. Wavelets rolling toward the shore break against the decrepit supports of the pier, from which I make my observations, slapping the wooden beams and braces.
As I turn to leave, my eye catches an oddly shaped cluster of floating objects, fuzzy, actually downy, floating objects. Five mallard ducklings cruise behind, along side, and around a mallard hen, as they parallel the pier, traveling toward deeper water. Their course carries them amid a few Canada geese that seem to ignore their passage completely. Their route takes them in the direction of an inactive crane-carrying barge moored at the end of the pier.
In the lee of the barge, the mallard hen stops swimming and immerses herself in the olive colored water. Her action immediately triggers a confused clutter of duckling dipping, with a maximum amount of sloshing and splashing and shaking and spraying. After several minutes, the hen swims toward the pier leading her brood, undeterred by my presence at the railing directly above the area she is heading for.
At intervals along the pier, timbers slant into the river at angles of about 30 degrees, creating ideal locations for ducklings to haul themselves out of the water to dry off, preen, and rest. The hen waddles up the right strut of a pair, followed by her offspring, but halts not leaving enough space for all five ducklings to attain a dry spot. The last in line scoots over to the left strut, running well up it, before beginning to preen. As the other four start smoothing their feathers, a wavelet washes over the lower end of the strut, carrying off one duckling, which frantically swims back to clamber out of the water. With so much energetic stretching and shaking the ducklings jostle one another, causing yet another to plop in to the river, where it then paddles madly back to the strut to scramble back up. At this point, the hen transfers to the left strut, allowing the four remaining ducklings to move farther up the right one, away from the river.
During all this activity, as its mate floats close by, a Canada goose ever so gradually drifts closer to the group, appearing to concentrate its gaze on the ducklings. About two feet from them, the goose abruptly turns to listlessly nibble at some algae on a nearby pier support, before slowly swimming away, joined by its mate. Some time later, when both geese return, one inclines toward the left strut occupied by the hen and one duckling, staying approximately two feet from them, its mate (the male?) toward the other strut accommodating the four remaining ducklings. Steadily, the second goose drifts nearer the quartet, until alarmed they react, two scampering up the strut and two bolting for the other strut. Seemingly startled by the commotion, the goose draws its head and neck back and actually back peddles from the pier. Meeting its mate, it turns and together they swim away.
[I offer the following thoughts on the previous encounter as conjecture.
First, both geese advanced toward the ducklings slowly and quietly, necks erect and heads held high. They exhibited not a single sign of aggressive behavior: no intimidating tactics, no head bobbing, no neck stretching, no hissing, no honking, no spread wings, and no rapid assault, just calming, reassuring movements. All during the approach the gazes of the geese remained fixed steadily on the ducklings.
Second, to my knowledge, as of the moment, of the sixteen, or so, pairs of local geese, three bred successfully, producing broods. Of those, only one brood of four has survived to near adulthood. Perhaps the goose couple was not able to nest, or their nest was destroyed, or the eggs were not viable, or the goslings succumbed to predators or accidents.
Now I tread perilously close to the edge of anthropomorphism with what I say next. To me, the comportment of the geese suggested a wistfulness, a longing for lost goslings, or a failed nest, or a yearning due to a failure to breed at all.]
With the departure of the geese, all six ducks resume preening, when once again a wavelet breaks over the left strut taking a duckling with it as it recedes. That duckling swims to the right strut, and in an effort to escape further dunkings, runs up the strut until it encounters two resting broodmates. Attempting to go farther up the strut, the duckling at first pushes against the pair and, when they fail to move, it tries climbing over them. When the first duckling stepped on squirms beneath its webbed foot, the climber is thrown off balance, causing another fall into the river. As the wet bedraggled creature scrambles up the left strut once more, I reluctantly take my leave of them all, looking for other small adventures.
(A word on ducklings:
This is the third brood of mallard ducklings this year. I observed the first set of six at the beginning of May. However, the hen was so inept that she lost two by the next day, and I never saw another one after that. While the ducklings swam in circles below her, emitting pathetic distress cries, the hen would call to them and hop from one vertical pier support to another. She did not get it into her brain that because the ducklings were unable to fly to her, she had to drop into the river for her presence to comfort them.
I saw the second brood in early June. The hen and four ducklings were resting on the beach, during one of those 90-degree days we experienced. At first, they were in the shade, but as the sun shifted the ducklings became exposed to its full strength. Rather than move her offspring, the hen half raised her right leg, and resting her open right wing on it, created a sun shade for the ducklings.)
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