After the revelations in yesterday's email from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, we went to visit our newly-recognized magpie duck in Como Lake. There he was, fat and feathered and practically eating out of a man's hand as he threw seeds to the flock, which was waddling around on the lake shore.
But then I noticed something.
I noticed something I had sort-of noticed before. Our duck's plumage didn't exactly match the photos of magpie ducks, though they had the same general configuration of light and dark.
But our duck is brown.
Our duck has a brown breast and sides which pretty closely match the rich variegated plumage on the mallards (particularly the females) all around him. Magpie ducks are closer to solid black and white.
Then I realized I probably didn't fully understand what the Cornell Laboratory guy said: "It is a hybrid of mallard origin" likely referred to OUR duck alone, not the whole species as I had assumed. I guess I thought his entire race had a mallard origin, like Thoroughbreds being spawned from ancient Arabians, or Bengal cats from wildcats, but probably not. Our guy is unique.
Though we can't know for sure because he likely won't submit to a DNA test, this is likely a mixed-race duck, a genetic puzzle, which is partly what makes him so special. That means either his Mummy or his Daddy was a magpie duck which mated with a mallard: a strange love affair, which might even have rendered him sterile, like the mule which results from a donkey mating with a horse.
Or not?
And why is he so big? He's nearly the size of a goose, for God's sake! It's hard to believe he was crossed with anything, let alone a duck so relatively small. We noticed his feet were at least an inch longer, as was his bill. But I tend to trust what the Cornell Lab guys say.
Today, when I was particularly eager to get a good look at him, he practically posed for me, his whole body out of the water, even turning to let me get a look at the other side.
Though the mystery has been solved, it hasn't been solved fully. The scenario is now more complicated: a magpie duck and a mallard producing offspring which has features of each, but is mostly magpie in size and configuration. And what of "the other one", the second magpie duck which we thought we saw once? Did that mating produce more than one offspring which decided to stay in the safety of the lake rather than become someone's dinner? Or is this Bigfoot all over again, seeing what you want to see?
I wonder, too, why he posed for us on dry land like that. We've been glimpsing that duck for several years, in an "oh, look, there he is!" "Where?" "Oh, he's gone now" sense. Never has he stood there three feet away from us, preening and quacking into the camera.
I've written about this guy before. He's an inhabitant of Como Lake in Coquitlam, B. C., a place we walk around a few times a week.
The lake is filled with mallards, various diving birds (even loons), and, sometimes, great congregations of Canada geese, but this particular duck is totally unique. To be honest, he doesn't even look like a wild duck. I've tried to find out more about him, but since I didn't have a name, only a description, I kept running up against a blank wall.
Over the several years we've seen him, I became more and more curious about this strange rogue duck, and then downright perplexed. Eventually, every time we spotted him I began to go nuts. Something was going on here! He was so big that he seemed like a domestic duck that had gone native. He was piebald in his markings, like a cowboy's pinto horse, and had that long, thick, curvy Donald Duck bill that you see in the barnyard.
A couple of years ago I found a magnificent site for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This is one of the best sites I've ever seen for sheer volume of content combined with ease of use. If you want to find anything bird, it's here. It's truly user-friendly, with lots of descriptions and thumbnails of species so you can put name to bird, not to mention recorded calls and songs for every type of bird. This site helped me figure out what those eerie "whoo-whoot-whoo-WHOOOOO!" sounds were that I was hearing on summer nights (barred owl). The call is described on the web site as "who cooks for you?", which delighted me. The "youuuuuu" sounds exactly like a descending trill on a bassoon.
Finally it occurred to me that if anyone in the world could identify my mystery duck, it would be the Cornell Laboratory. I emailed them, attempting to attach a link to the video of it (which may or may not have worked) and describing it as well as I could.
Some time went by, but not much. Then today I got this email, which delighted me no end!
Hi Margaret,
It is definitely a domestic-type — closest I can find is something called a Magpie Duck. It is a hybrid of Mallard origin.
Now that I had something to google, everything matched up and I realized that it had to be a magpie duck. Apparently, these birds make good eating and are cultivated for their meat, a fact that had better not get around Como Lake. It's surrounded by avid fisher-persons who might just be up for a duck dinner. This guy is so friendly and hangs around the shore so much that he'd be an easy catch.
(Not our duck. Presented for comparison only.)
A couple of times we thought we saw a smaller duck of this type. A female? It's possible, though we didn't pay enough attention. I'm not sure why it's called a magpie, but that's his name, and he apparently has mallard blood, perhaps the way I have Spanish blood from the Spanish Armada. (Not. We were all dirt-poor Irish.) Some of the photos I've found show ducks with iridescent mallard-like patches on their heads.
Well I'll be damned!
Meantime, though this song isn't really about my duck, it's very lovely and I want to include it here.
And one more barred owl video.
POST-SCRIPT: Since writing this admittedly-sparse piece, I've had some thoughts. Thoughts of the ugly duckling, of changelings, of barnyard ducks escaping certain death and flapping away from the hatchet. Of strange-looking magpie ducks who barely escaped being dinner.
This is why I like this duck so much, and why it drove me so crazy before I knew what it was. Though it plainly didn't fit in its environment and looked sort of like a turkey among doves (albeit a nice-looking, handsome turkey), it seemed so comfortable, so glad to be where it was. Its fellow ducks, mostly mallards, didn't seem to notice that it was different, but then - they're used to honkin' hundreds of Canada geese, not always the most hospitable creatures, suddenly descending on the lake and taking it over, doing weird things like swimming in big circles. One friendly-looking duck, one big farmyard-looking duck was not going to be a problem, and they all dunk and dabble the same way, ducktails up. Plenty of gunk and ill-advised tourist-food to go around.
But at the same time. . . I'm depressed today, not quite psych-ward depressed but down, and I wonder if it's because the air has been let out of a longstanding mystery. This weird, doesn't-fit-at-all duck suddenly has a sort of identity. He at least makes sense now. And I don't know whether I like that. I don't know whether I'll be so prone to saying, "Oh, look, there he is!" when he glides or waddles into view. Or maybe I will, but it won't be the same.
It's as if he's been operating under an alias, or has been The Duck That Has No Name, and is now "named", or at least species-ed as a magpie duck. Odd name, that - one would think it would be harlequin or something, with those mixed markings. The only association I have with magpies is Heckle and Jeckle.
I've done a bit of digging into the breed, not a lot mind you because that would bore me, and I can't find reference to it being any kind of hybrid. The YouTube videos I've found feature pet magpie ducks, not obviously being fattened up for the kill.
The magpie duck is maybe 50% larger than the mallards, heavier-bodied, with that cobby build and waddly proportion that aren't common in wild birds. Yes, the mallards have large breasts, but they're mainly floats, a way to keep themselves upright in the water and protected from cold. This guy is just solid, man, carved out of alabaster, or plain wood like a decoy bobbing around in the water. There probably would be some pretty good eating there, with some orange sauce on the side.
Ducks, swans, all that stuff, it's the material of fairy tales and legend. I have a mystical attachment to birds, which is why I went into such deep mourning at the very premature death of my beloved Paco. I hardly had any time with her at all before we found her dead in her cage, for no reason anyone ever understood.
The fact my back yard birds have fled is a mystery, and also pains me. Last year the yard was teeming with species, including loud, arrogant, impossibly gorgeous Steller's jays who would swoop in and empty out the feeder. We also saw juncos, chickadees, wrens, thrushes, towhees, sparrows, and - every once in a while - the magnificent visitation of a flicker burning bright.
Now, they've all gone. Where? and why? Is it because we have a cat now? Because we never expected to have a cat. Bentley is a hunting voyeur only, and is not allowed to go outside and become catmeat. But he does spend considerable time peering out the back window.
And yet, last summer, the first summer we had him, the birds still teemed.
When I go to Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, blackbirds literally flutter down out of the sky and eat out of my hand. I feel like freaking St. Francis of Assisi. They turn their heads this way and that, their eyes like obsidian beads, their feet freaky black leather twigs. What are they thinking?
Birds do seem to think with a single mind, like the Borg. They exist as collectives. Like humans, they're flock animals, only far more clever than we are. Certainly, they are better survivors. When it all collapses, when the day of reckoning comes, will some of the birds make it? Hitchcock portrayed them as freakish and merciless, and yes, there is that aspect to them. The fat pigeon that took over my hand at Piper Spit weighed about twenty pounds, and I realized as I looked at it that, close up, it was as hideous as the dinosaur from which it evolved.
POST-POST. I felt bad about this, about mentioning Bentley as one of the reasons the birds fled from the back yard. Because it might not be that, at all. We've noticed how dramatically bird populations wax and wane, even week-to-week. Those first couple of visits to Piper Spit were so bird-heavy that I assumed it was always like that, a teeming bird paradise. Then, one week we went and there were only sullen-looking heaps of geese (geese not being my favorites - they have a habit of hissing at you, before they lower their heads and charge). No more magnificent sandhill cranes or iridescent swallows or gorgeously-plumed wood ducks or or or - . But next time we went, about 2/3 of them were back. I don't know what drives them, I don't.
But it's not Bentley! Bentley is like a second child born after tragedy, especially beloved. He is just the best cat ever.
UPDATE from 2021! This post has so many post-posts that I hesitated to add this addition. But since I just got a comment from someone about the Mystery Duck, I thought I'd post a link to a collection of YouTube videos I shot over the past five years of the ducks we came to call Bosley and Belinda. Haven't seen Bosley in several months however, and we are getting worried. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv59M8aSlCSb4R7FRY7jsB__G0fj4Odt4
Early cereal ads on TV had no idea how to pronounce the word protein.
It always came out "PROTE-ee-an", or something like it. I don't think people knew or cared much about nutrition then, though the ads always claimed the cereal caused children to grow to almost supernatural heights.
I knew "protean" had something to do with Proteus, a character from Greek mythology, but couldn't remember anything about him. So had to look it up.
Definition of proteus
any of a genus (Proteus) of aerobic usually motile enterobacteria that include saprophytes in decaying organic matter and a common causative agent (P. mirabilis) of urinary tract infections
Proteus: a Greek sea god capable of assuming different forms
Definition of protean:
of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms
displaying great diversity or variety
Protean is not to be confused with protein (a member of a large group of chemicals necessary to and found in all living things).
But I also found this astonishing fact:
PROTEUS An elderly Sea-God who was the son and seal-herder of Poseidon.
How can the son of someone be elderly? This is full of mystery, and I don't feel like exploring it because it has nothing to do with Kellogg's OK, an obsolete cereal of the '60s. I did try very hard to find a picture of Proteus, and all I could find was Poseidon. All right, they didn't make any cruise ship disaster movies about Proteus, but I SHOULD be able to find a picture of him!
And how in God's name do you herd seals?
News flash!
OK, I JUST FOUND THIS:
This is, supposedly, Proteus, though he does not appear to be herding seals. In fact, maybe the thing with the tail is Proteus! And he certainly isn't elderly, but who is elderly all their lives?
And, even better, I found this picture of Poseidon. So Otis isn't the only one who likes to dress up funny.
CALGARY -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is thinking of "our friends in France" and will work to fight terrorism.
"We had a terrible attack last night and our hearts go out to the victims and their families," Trudeau said Friday while in Calgary to attend the Stampede.
"Canada stands with France as a steadfast ally and we will work with the international community to fight terror to ensure that we live in a peaceful world."
There were no reports of Canadian casualties. At least 84 people were killed when a truck full of weapons plowed into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers in the French resort city of Nice late Thursday.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the federal government has no information that would necessitate a change in Canada's terror threat level, which is currently at medium.
Still, Goodale urged Canadians to stay vigilant and alert.
"Canadians can rest assured that when the security and intelligence sector receives credible warnings on a specific threat, they work with the appropriate government partners to ensure the safety of Canadians," Goodale said in a statement.
Goodale noted that while in Paris in January, he signed a declaration with his French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, to work together on terrorism, organized crime and irregular migration.
OK. I'm not saying these guys are bad. I'm not even saying these guys are negligent or don't know how to do their jobs.
I just think these guys have run out of things to say.
I think they're having a harder and harder time helping Canadians feel safe. It's no longer going to work telling us they'll be sure to to warn us if something bad is about to happen.
There were no such warnings in Nice.
There was only a split-second of "warning", then chaos and death as 84 people were ploughed down, their lives ended in mid-breath. Nobody expected it except the killer.
So Justin Trudeau is called upon to, as usual, say a few words aboaut the latest atrocity. And this from the Calgary Stampede! I'm not against the Calgary Stampede, though I really hate how the chuckwagon races seem to kill at least a few horses every year.
But it's the juxtaposition. Horrendous carnage. Calgary Stampede. And bland, predictable words from the son of a "great" Prime Minister who was vilified all during his very long tenure (which was very long ago).
We grab at the familiar, in hope. We gasp for reassurance.
None of us gets a warning. We don't.
Many people are now thoroughly sick of "our thoughts and prayers go out to --- ", especially with regards to mass shootings. But this has become an "insert atrocity here" statement, and we're hearing it practically every week.
My daughter, a seasoned TV newswoman, believes the world is doomed. It was alarming to hear her talk yesterday. In my worst moments, I agree with her, though even in my own blog I have to be careful how I write about it. Of course it can be said that she's right up against it every day, reporting on all the worst stuff that happens worldwide.
But the worst is getting worse. The bland is getting REALLY bland, and stretched pretty thin.
If a real disaster happened in Canada, I'm not sure how Justin Trudeau would handle it.
"He's like a deer in the headlights," my husband likes to say.
Let us hope we never find out. But how can we know for sure?
This was one of those tiresome Facebook situations where someone (a "friend", i. e. someone you know next-to-nothing about) jumps all over you for a fairly innocent and likely misunderstood comment. Somebody posted something about the whole All Lives Matter issue by some "rich white guy" (known to be a rich white guy) claiming to know more about it than most people by dint of the fact that he was a rich white guy. My comment was something like "who IS this guy?" I honestly didn't know who he was, but the poster, and I'm damned if I remember his name because I am trying so hard to forget it, took it really literally and even personally and sent me one of those long, long, twist-and-turny replies bristling with sniping hostility that I did not even read, I was so eager to get to "unfriend"! Then later on, somewhere, under some post of MINE, he made another snarky comment about my unfriending him. Gee, why did I do THAT, I wonder? Such a swell fellow! He was ripping into me for not wanting to be his "friend" any more.
Not for him but for me, I began to gather my thoughts about all this and write, then thought they might be worth posting here because they sum up a lot of "where I am at" (as they used to say) right now. By the way, the reply would not post because he is no longer my friend, so he will never find out what I thought about the whole thing! But the guy was an asshole anyway, who needs him? I have even had to cut loose from some long-time friends who had wandered off into a mental wilderness that was very dark, too dark for me to enter into. And social media can be a jungle.
Is it sad? I suppose it is, but it's also a lesson in what really matters. Anyway, here is my comment/"reply" to the unfriended asshole, which he will never read because he is no longer my "friend".
My FB policy now is if I feel ANY stress at all from ANY interaction, I just have to get away from it. I don't even think about it for too long - it's a reflex. My mental health is too valuable to subject it to any unnecessary stress. I'm pretty much on the verge of bailing from the whole FB thing. It's not too enjoyable, and I have to ask myself, often, what am I gaining, and/ or what is the other person gaining from all this?
I mean, what is the real benefit, if any? Was I all withered up mentally before social media, was I starving or lacking or was I "not myself"? It seems to me that life was richer and that personal interaction was richer and more considered when you had to go find a stamp and carry the message to the mail box. If this is to have any meaning whatsoever, I need to be able to say what I think or feel, but it's starting to seem like I get jumped on if anything too "real" comes out. Then the feeling is: can't you stand up and defend yourself, then? Why? I honestly did not KNOW who this guy was - still don't, and felt tired by another stream of commentary, tired of the whole thing, of people killed and blown up, of endless comments, comments, COMMENTS when it leads to exactly nothing!
I was never meant for this, only got into it to promote my book (ha!) because that's what you do, and fell down a rabbit hole which has been mostly unpleasant. I unfriend now without giving it much of a thought. Why? These aren't my friends! No, they aren't, my friends are my friends and most of these people are just something else. I was naive and really blundered into it in a wrongheaded way, having no idea how to do it, thinking that amassing a lot of writing/publishing associates was what I was supposed to do. Jesus. What I am supposed to do is write from the heart, put it out there and forget about it, then, the next day, do the same thing over again. This process du jour is what gives me joy and is never boring, no matter what anyone says about it.
The Canadian vocal group The Tenors have apologized after a member of the collective changed the lyrics of national anthem "O Canada" to include "all lives matter" at the MLB All-Star Game. During opening ceremonies inside San Diego's Petco Park, the group took the field to sing their country's national anthem when one singer, Remigo Pereira, went rogue and altered the song lyrics and held up a sign that read "All Lives Matter."
There was so much that was offensive, stupid and just WRONG about this incident that it's hard to know just where to begin. This guy, Remigo Pereira, who "identifies as Canadian" (but who isn't, because he was born in Boston), took it upon himself to mutilate the words of O Canada before a baseball game. I mean crucify them. Not the whole thing, mind. He just ripped out two (unnecessary, he must have thought) lines, "With glowing hearts we see thee rise/The true north strong and free", and casually substituted, "We're all brothers and sisters/All lives matter to the grape." Or great, or grave, or brave - no one quite knows! Mysteriously, this line about grapes is usually followed by, "From far and wide, o Canada/we stand on guard for thee", which is not the best rhyme I've ever heard. Grapes/thee? Brave/thee? Grave? Great? Oh.
Oh. Where do I start? Why would anyone, faux Canadian or not, casually and unannounced, change two lines of any national anthem, especially the national anthem of a country which has bickered over amending TWO WORDS (changing "in all thy sons" to "in all of us", a tectonic shift to the average Canadian) for seven or eight years?
You don't mess with national anthems. You just don't! Even if someone had to get up in public and sing O Say Can You See, they'd have to choke their way through all those "rocket's red glare/bombs bursting in air" references, verbatim. It's only being respectful. That is the way she is wrote. Another thing. If you are at all professional, you don't change ANY important aspect of a performance without rehearsing it in advance, or, at very least, letting your fellow group members know what you're planning to do. You don't write two plug-ugly, non-scanning, non-rhyming, nonsensical lines, rip out the two perfectly good/poetic lines that were already there, and jam in your cobbled-together piece of shit in their place. You don't.
But it's so much more than that! You don't, don't don't DON'T make reference to a politically sensitive topic that has touched off raw and painful feelings in a group which has been historically marginalized. You don't wade in there assuming people will approve of your thuglike ignorance of the issues. Was he trying to convince the crowd, was he assuming they all agreed with him, or merely trying to lay waste to a perfectly good national anthem that has served the country for a hundred years? The only less-appropriate subject he could have picked would be Muslims. (I will now turn on my ugly switch and see if I can write as awkwardly as he did.)
"They're all terrorists, let us build a wall And keep. . .them. . .out. . .of. . .here." Trump might approve, but no one else would know where to look. In this age of Twitter, a faux pas like that instantly rockets around the world. It makes Canadians look stupid. Americans probably think that IS the way it goes, or at least that it has been mysteriously amended, and are wondering why.
A country's national anthem is important. It used to be a means to rally the troops, like the flag. Even in this tweety-twit-ridden age, it still reflects, more or less, what its people believe and is usually something they can get behind. Casually mangling the words of it is trespass. Invasion. Buggering it all up! Holding up a grotty little piece of paper that you probably quickly scribbled with a Bic pen and a sheet of lined paper is hardly a dignified way to make a political statement.
A ball game is NOT where you proudly and arrogantly display your own personal and highly obnoxious beliefs!
As for the way the group handled this. . . Pereira was immediately labelled a “lone wolf", kind of like a mad dog that had to be put down at the vet. The rest of the group quickly put this guy in the corner. It was the good old "he did it!" of childhood, with the accompanying finger-point.
There is the usual sobbing contrition on Twitter, the gee guys, I didn’t really mean it, I was trying to make a statement which would unite all of humanity. This sort of slobber seems to excuse any horrible, insensitive thing a person wants to blast out there. People’s attention span is only a few seconds now, so this will very quickly be forgotten and even forgiven. The group's discharge of the rogue tenor was very conditional: "until further notice", making you wonder just what that "further notice" will be.
But no, it doesn't make you wonder! It means "until we take him back". He's on Twitter now, for Christ's sake! We might get some likes, some followers, maybe even go viral.
The group's popularity, or at least their notoriety, has soared because of this joker. He'll be in great demand. Maybe the Americans will actually want him now:
O say can you see
Donald Trump in a tree?
Or maybe he'll start a trend of IMPROVISING the lyrics to every national anthem! Why stick to those stodgy old words? They're so yesterday. Maybe a rap would be more exciting.
And let's change the tune, too. Throw out the whole thing.
Remigio Pereira
I speak for the human race and the lives of all sentient beings. Love, peace and harmony for ALL has always been my life's purpose.
The preceeding Twitter quote is Pereira's justification/explanation for holding up that grotty little piece of paper before the game: see, he speaks for the human race! His little amended (improved?) ditty encompasses the feelings, passions and aspirations of seven billion people. Hey, I didn't think he was THAT good a singer, but then, I was distracted by how atrocious he is as a lyricist. Let us hope that "all sentient beings" are coping with this ego-driven shenanigan better than I am.
