Goldeneye duck looking like a loonYesterday a friend of mine who used to live in Toronto but who now
lives in a crooked little house on the edge of the Pacific ocean got
into a conversation with my son, who used to live in the same crooked
little house, about a flock of birds that have been floating just
offshore for several weeks. My friend was almost certain that these
birds were loons (he is a big fan of loons) but my son, who observed a
similar flock in the same location last winter, had done some research
and decided these birds were goldeneye ducks.

Disappointing to my friend but this led us to the Audubon website and this extraordinary sentence:

"The Golden-eye Ducks manifest a propensity to adhere to a place
which they find productive, and that to a most extraordinary degree."

Further down in the article we read: "About four o’clock, as I was
returning, with a fine Turkey-cock slung to my back, I met the same
party, who told me that, "sure enough," the Ducks were at the ford, and
I was likely to have "a good crack at them."

himself, a man who committed himself to find and paint all the birds of
North America. Although I am not as devoted to birds as Audubon was, in
Grade 5 I was president of the Audobon Society at my school.