A long time ago I decided my favorite bird was a particular variety of duck, the specific variety of which doesn’t matter to the story, which is good, because I don’t know the name of this bird anyway. The duck is medium sized, with a black body and white tufts of feathers that poke out from the top of its head like a rebellious mohawk. Making it even more impressive is the bright orange ring that surrounded the white mohawk, making for a uniquely handsome, or at least memorable, bird. Each spring I would look forward to the return of my favorite bird, and each spring I’d be just as enamored with it as I was the prior year. This spring, right on schedule, I saw a small handful of my birds splashing in the shallows around the eastern tip of rainbow point. They were diving and splashing in the gin clear spring water. But soon after I saw more of these ducks swimming in a dirty, shallow canal that leads from a farmers field onto one of our other lesser lakes, and not a day later I saw this bird eating what looked like dirt on the side of a road, it’s beak messy and its white tuft stained by the roadside feast. I decided that I couldn’t have a favorite bird with such low standards, so I’m on the lookout for a more discerning bird.
