December's full moon is always nearer than the others for the year. This night's was special....closer than any time in the past fifteen years. At its perigee, near setting as we approached George's field, the moon hung bright and clear....fourteen percent brighter and thirty percent bigger than normal. No need for flashlights setting out this morning. Those who think hunting is all about the killing have never spent time with these two hunters when the cold is so crisp as to catch your breath and the moon so bright and beautiful as to make you wonder at God's glory.
We set up by the beaver dam on George's side. Realizing now that most who visit don't know about George's and Edward's and other secret spots gives me pause to explain, and so I will in the next post.....for now, George's side of the creek is next to a big field that this summer was thick with soybeans on one side and forage sorghum on the other. On cold, frosty days like this you could walk all the way to the edge of the beaver swamp, a small pond astride a smaller creek, in your bedroom slippers without getting wet or muddy. From this side, you face east into the rising sun, so duck identification and first light shots are tough. Beyond is a large marsh, full of boot sucking mud and hat-floater holes. The spot in front of us was calm water, just above the beaver dam and full of acorns, a favorite morning spot for whatever puddle ducks move through.
This morning we were lucky. Plenty of birds were trading up the creek from their roosts on the lake, and although Croc yipped in her excitement, the ducks decoyed well. I killed the first mallard drake into the dekes and another minutes later that fell into a cedar bough twenty feet up a tree...thankfully he eventually tumbled down without assistance and Croc made her second retrieve.
A pair of widgeons decoyed and we put both on the water....both drakes....widgeons here are more unusual than they once were when there was plenty of hydrilla in the lake, before the damned carp were put in. That both were drakes seemed even more unusual. Croc made a long retrieve and hunted hard to find the first, which had gone out of sight up the pond. Then she nabbed the second one from where he had scooted under a big cat brier patch....good girl.
Widgeons, called baldpates in some regions, are pretty birds. Smaller than mallards, they get the baldpate moniker from the appearance of their heads. Gray with a green streak across the eye, the color fades to a pale, almost white crown.
Widgeons have very pretty chestnut, black, and gray hackle feathers on their backs and the tops of their wings. I should have saved these for CG, my fly-tying buddy.
As always on bluebird mornings, the birds were done flying by 7:30, so back to the house we went for breakfast and coffee. As we crossed the yard, I noticed the sun highlighting the American holly in the yard.
What a fine morning....what a great place to live.
1 comment:
After looking more carefully at the pictures, it looks in retrospect like our widgeons were a pair, drake and hen. They sure both looked like drakes in hand....white crowns, green on heads, etc. The more I look at the photos, one had much more buff tones and the crown is less white...go figure...not the first time for a missed ID. At least it wasn't a canvasback..that would have been pretty embarassing.
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