No! Duck Season!

[threemeninaboat]

I'm sitting there reading my New Yorker and some funny, obviously injured duck creature is "flying" across 26th. So I gets me my gloves and a box with a lid and go duck hunting. Some Stock Show people help me put him in the box and I call up the Greenwood Wildlife Rescue in Longmont. I can bring him in at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

It's a Hooded Merganser.

He's really pretty and maybe bleeding a bit but his eyes are clear and I think he's got a better chance in my laundry room than with the cars and fox.

I hope he makes it.

Comments

[sanguine-void.livejournal.com]

*fingers crossed*

What a beautiful animal! He's so lucky that you noticed him!

[okterok.livejournal.com]

Wow :). U shld take his picture! You're nice :). What does lilly think of all this?

[manintheboat.livejournal.com]

I haven't wanted to flash him or bother him too much. He obviously gets pretty nervous when I get near him.

Lily doesn't know. He's in the laundry room.

[xlabrysx.livejournal.com]

So do I. Keep us posted!

[gows.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm . . . hooded mergansers are pretty, pretty birds.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly placid ones, too, considering all the other ducks *I* have been around have been aggressive, angry animals that realized they could break your toes by pecking them hard enough. This one's just curled up and sleeping.

I once got to see a scarlet tanager that had hit into a window hard enough to get a concussion. We took care of it for a while until it flew off. (I don't know that it lived: it really hit hard. We'd stand it up and put down food for it, and it would drift off to sleep and fall over and we'd stand it back up.) That was one spectacular bird up close.

[gows.livejournal.com]

aggressive, angry animals that realized they could break your toes by pecking them hard enough

*laugh* Maybe you got lucky with this one.

it would drift off to sleep and fall over and we'd stand it back up

Yikes. With something that bad, I'd be leaning more toward the "not" than "surviving."

We used to have birds fly into our windows all the time. Some of 'em made it, some of 'em didn't. I remember holding a wee ruby-crowned kinglet in my hands and marveling at the delicacy of its bones. We also came across a dying hummingbird in the waters of one of the bays of Prince William Sound--amazing how tiny-tiny it way.

My mother was an elementary school teacher and often taught units on birds. She would take the dead birds and put them in the freezer and take them to class to show the kids--something she picked up from /my/ fourth grade teacher. Made for interesting "let's look in the freezer and see what's available for dinner" conversations. *laugh*