Sometimes my birding and my rhyming get mixed up with each other. Yesterday I went to a neighborhood in Wausau where a winter-open creek (Bos Creek) appears from somewhere. All I know is that each winter since we moved back here in 2021, Mallards have congregated there along with a few American Black Ducks. Yesterday’s goal was to add a Black Duck to my year list, which I did, even though I had to stand outside for a minute or so in the 1-degree weather to do it, peering down at the creek, and trying to pore through the nearly 100, or maybe more, Mallards to find one. It turns out that there were at least two of them, so similar and so different from, a female Mallard.
I added American Black Duck to my year list and went on to other birding and then to chores. But in the middle of the night (early this morning), I awoke, thinking of the Black Ducks and then thinking of the old children’s song, “Little White Duck” (there are a bunch of You Tube versions of it online if you are not familiar with it). I couldn’t get the new words that came to me out of my mind. So I got up, and wrote it down. Here is my oh-so-creative “new” song:
There’s some little Black Ducks, sitting in the water, some little Black Ducks, doing what they outer.
They swim with the Mallards at little Bos Creek. Each so black with a bright yellow beak.
There’s some little Black Ducks, sitting in the water. Quack. Quack. Quack.