ducks

August 9, 2026

Sara Kate Wilkinson

Sara Kate Wilkinson

— 5 min read
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August 9, 2026
Bird of the Day: juvenile wood duck. My seventh favorite duck, but a duck is a duck.

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 7:02 am

Bird Species: tufted titmouse, blue-gray gnatcatcher, northern flicker, mourning dove, Carolina wren, common yellowthroat, eastern wood pewee, downy woodpecker, blue grosbeak, wood duck, eastern kingbird, great blue heron, green heron, great egret, osprey, American goldfinch, northern cardinal, Carolina chickadee

Things I Thought About:

  • From the parking lot I can hear a wren, a titmouse, a pewee, a chickadee, a robin and a cardinal. The wren, titmouse and chickadee are hard to differentiate at first. They all have rattling, buzzy little calls, and like listening to a orchestra, it can take a moment to pick out which instrument is carrying which line.
  • I think when birds wake up, they have to chirp and click and buzz a bit before they’re ready to sing. In a hushed morning, you can hear little, short, hard-edged noises deep in the understory, but no song at all. The birds haven't really started yet today. When they do, one will start, usually a cardinal or wren, and then the whole place will light up with music. It makes me think about a Paul Simon lyric, Somewhere in a burst of glory/Sound becomes a song.
  • I can hear a yellowthroat clicking in this brush over here, and I can see movement deep in there, and he’s either gonna come up to the top and sing soon, or I’m just never gonna see him.
A secret third thing: it doesn't sing or move to the top, but I find it anyway. I'm sure this is a tough one to see on your phone, but I decided not to crop it because I like this photo quite a lot. I like it when you get an idea of the backdrop and scale and can tell the sun hasn't hit this part of the park yet. This is a juvenile; I think a female.
  • Earlier this week, as I was crying on a Zoom catch-up call with a friend, we agreed that I was, in fact, having a real Bummer Summer. But she encouraged me, that was sure to be followed by a...and while she was still working through options for upward-trending adjectives for fall I said, "Rock-Bottom Autumn." Even though Maggie disapproved of the sentiment, she was forced to admit no one was going to come up with a better turn of phrase that day. Thus do I curse myself through the power of clever wordplay.
  • The other option I developed this week is, of course, "Unabomber Septomber," where I move to a shack in the woods and see how that improves my mood and mental health. If you pay close attention, there's a clue in the name.
  • There was a fledgling of some variety in a cascading bit of greenery near the boardwalk, and I had an opportunity to possess myself in patience and wait to identify it. An adult head finally popped out the top, a blue grosbeak, which I haven't listed since very early May.
One of those cases where the males get to be gaudy and gorgeous and the females are just kind of there. I support all women, but I'll confess it can be a little deflating to say you saw "a blue grosbeak, but not the kind that's blue."
  • It's already crowded and extremely warm at 8:30am. Shocking, to report that the humidity is bad in August, in a swamp.
  • September is the hottest month of the year in the south, I feel this in my bones, and no one ever discusses it. We have somehow convinced ourselves it's fall, from what? College football? People have outdoor weddings in September. If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand it.
  • The whole daylight-saving debate is irritating to me also. People know when to wake up. Your body knows when it is time to get up and start your day; that's what eastern exposures are for, and yes, it does change through the year, and we'd all be a lot better off if we just opened our drapes and got up when the sun came up and went to bed when it got dark, and if that means 4:35 pm in the winter, I said what I said.
The bird of the day is tiny green tree frog with cute little pads on his digits.
  • The last time I saw this osprey he was posted up drying his wings after a miss, but I would say he has more than made up for it with that catch. What a fucking beast of a bird.
Once again, I am forced to goggle at the size and strength of those wings.
  • I bet flying feels as cool as it looks. I bet you could really zone out and empty your mind.
  • Those books where people turn into animals, I can't remember what they're called. They were after my time, but I know they were very popular with kids about a decade younger than me. The ones where the cover art had a kid going through stages and turning into a tiger or an eagle or whatever? I never read them, but I have picked up enough about them through conversation with readers of all ages to know that in canon, if you stay an animal for longer than an hour you run the risk of never coming back.
  • I think I'd be willing to make the experiment for the chance to be an osprey for an hour. It looks badass.

BOTD: Wood duck. Surprisingly, not the osprey, after all that. I was pretty much done at the park today, after a mind-numbingly sweaty walk that wiped every thought from my stupid head except languid heat and loose muscles. On the way back to the car, I saw these two wood ducks, trudging through the mud to get to open water. There was a terrific hatch of nine wood ducklings out here in the spring, and I suspect these are a couple of that clutch, almost grown up.

I love ducks, and I especially love the winter, when all the great flocks of every local duck will come back to these ponds. In the summer, only breeding pairs live here, which is fun and fine, but I miss ducks.

Wood ducks are by no means my favorite ducks, but I rather like the females, with that big white eye ring and those pretty soft muted blue touches on the wing. Mostly, though, I was just happy to see a duck.

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