The goofy, serious Northern Shoveler

The dabbling ducks. When I hear that name I think not so much of a type of bird but of a bunch of ducks just hanging out, dabbling at whatever takes their fancy -- watercolor painting, the local amateur theatrical society, playing the fiddle.

Northern Shovelers, Bosque del Apache, New Mexico.

Of course they are busy all day long doing dabbling of a much more serious kind: puddling about looking for food. As the last ray of light was fading here at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, these Northern Shovelers had a true urgency about them; you could feel it. The weather was especially cold this February, so no doubt they needed every calorie they could get. And there was a storm rolling in.

Snow was on the way, and bitter, cold winds.

Actually, this guy looks kind of irritated with me for taking his attention, doesn't he? This lasted for all of a second, and then he was back to his job, as though I wasn't there at all.

That yellow eye is kind of glaring at me.

This is the view I'm most accustomed to seeing of any dabbling duck, a.k.a. the headless duck:

Headless Northern Shovelers.

But Bosque del Apache is a magical kind of place, a birder's fantasy, where you can see birds relatively close and at your leisure. Being able to sit and get a good look at these Shovelers as they got up out of the water onto the ice, it suddenly struck me just how odd looking these ducks are. They are like bills on legs.

There is something especially cute about a creature that is so serious and businesslike yet looks so fantastical. And what they do with their bill makes them seem all the more fantastical -- half bird, half whale. As they scoot along through the water, the fringed edge of that bill, like a comb with more than 100 teeth, filters the water so they can harvest tiny invertebrates. (This photographer captured a shot of the lamellae, those projections on the bill.)

The poor dull-looking female Northern Shovelers -- when I got home I realized I had taken hardly any photos of them. But a female Northern Shoveler is an awesome creature: When a predator comes to her nest, she poops on her eggs to make them unappealing. Hah, take that!

Female Northern Shoveler - less spectacular with her brown eyes and plumage, but awesome nonetheless.

Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache

If going to Bosque del Apache (the Woods of the Apache) in New Mexico taught me one thing, it's that there is a place on this Earth for all approaches to life; there is a niche for every creature, no matter what its disposition. The relaxed and unhurried, the frantic and driven; the casually sociable, the desperately communal. Take the wintering Snow Geese. They huddle close together on the ice for the night, and the very first instant the sun hits them, they pop up, one by one in rapid succession, as if someone flipped a switch --

And all at once, as if they were each a part of one much larger creature, they snap into the air, with a deafening, disorienting, exhilarating beating of wings. They have fields to eat their way through, and they must do it NOW, with everybody else.

I love Snow Geese. I've loved them ever since I read "The Snow Goose" by Paul Gallico when I was a kid. I liked the idea of being that migrating Snow Goose, having the freedom to fly away and then return each year to the friendly man in the old lighthouse who'd saved it from hunters. But at Bosque del Apache, I had to admit that I am nothing like a Snow Goose at all. The Sandhill Crane lifestyle is much more my speed.

A half hour or so later, most of them are still clacking around on the frozen pond, doing a slow-motion tap dance. No rush for them. There is preening to do. And spying --

They don't feel the need to conform and all fly at once. It's an individual choice, it seems. But there is a lot of umming and ahhing about it. First there is the pitching forward of the neck. They always pitch themselves forward like this when they are about to take off. But the simple fact that a bird is pitching itself forward does not mean it's about to fly. No, it might well change its mind. What is it waiting for? Who knows.

Well, there is more preening and spying to do.

Wings to stretch.

And talking. A lot of talking. Sandhill Cranes are very chatty.

Eventually, a bird will not only pitch forward but will move to the next phase and actually take a few loping strides forward across the ice and begin to lift off -- with all the lightness of a C-130 cargo plane. There is a kind of uplift, but then after a few flaps there is a moment when you think "No, it can't possibly get fully airborne," but then after a few more flaps, the bird is arcing through the sky gracefully -- yet making a call that sounds like a person joyously and enthusiastically trying to play the bugle for the first time.

That the Apache camping here hundreds of years ago probably watched the ancestors of these birds do exactly this just makes it all the more extraordinary to witness.