I was living in Southeastern Virginia near the coast, that part of the world they call Tidewater, not a place, just a huge area of flat coastal plane stretching from Maryland through Virginia and the Carolinas and maybe into Georgia, that area where millions of ducks from Canada and northern North America choose to spend the winter, an area where duck hunters and bird watchers alike experience a sort of heaven on earth.
I hunted a lot back then. Some Navy lifers and I leased an area on Back Bay just east of the Great Dismal Swamp south of Little Creek, DamNeck, and Oceana and not far from the coast. I think we were in Virginia, but we may have been in Carolina. No matter, we had Federal duck stamps and permits for both states. Back Bay was a place where the snow geese from Central Canada came to winter as did mallards, black ducks, redheads and canvasbacks, and blue winged teals and many others.
What a sight to see when, at the early light of dawn, they'd awaken and take flight grouping into their V formations as they circled higher and higher to get their bearings, finally flying off to the rich farmlands of peanuts, corn, soybeans and millet, all picked by now but where not-caught grain still peppered the ground.
That was the best time to hunt, as they took to flight and grouped in the morning or as they came back to the Bay in the evening. Well after the season was over, I'd go to the area and marvel in the movements and habits of these waterfowl. And then in mid-March they grouped by type, in the thousands and day by day took off to their breeding grounds, to their homes in the North, still cold but thawing enough to expose food.
It was sad, too. You got to know the ducks, the geese, the swans. They were like neighbors and though the past season was long since over and the next one was many months away, you missed their presence. You missed their early morning lift off, the sounds, the quacks, the honks, the whistles, the air in their wings, their silhouettes against the light of the breaking day.
One long weekend I drove down to the Outer Banks. It was cold and raw with a northwest wind so strong you had to hunker down on the ocean side of the dunes, the leeward side. The sky was gray and menacing. Then I saw them. They were in a column maybe thirty feet across all moving north just a couple feet above the water, all kinds of them.
In fairer weather, they flew in their own groups by types, high in the sky off to the north and west. Forget that. Forget the V formations in the sky. Forget the groupings by type. The mallards were flying alongside the geese, the redheads, the teals.
They were staying low and close to the shore, yet over the water, and down where they were protected from the wind. It took less energy that way as did staying in that narrow column which also by its own momentum broke the force of the wind.
As a wave would rush in and break on the sand, the ducks would rise to clear the crest, and that hump in the column would stay right there as the birds flew on, one behind the other, minutes after the wave had passed. The column was a flying, crawling, mass of waterfowl on a mission, a mission to get home. They could sort things out there, find their friends, and group up again.
I stayed hunkered down in those dunes much of that day and the next. I listened for sounds. All I heard was the wind screaming through the dunes and an occasional wave breaking on the sand. I watched in awe. I never saw a break in that line, that column of birds. In my heart I wished them well, and I wished them safe passage on their mission, on their way north, on their way home.
Origianlly published 2001 March 27
