Your photography is beautiful, Huitzil. The last photograph with the reflection is exquisite. I also love seeing the male wood duck. What a spectacular bird. It reminds me of the Wendell Berry poem The Peace of Wild Things:
“When despair for the world grows in me,
and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life
and my children's lives may be --
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Is that where the expression "old coot" comes from? How so? I'm going to have to go look it up now. It had never occurred to me to wonder what a coot was. I think somewhere in my mind I assumed it was a dog.
I should have taken a picture of a rubber duckie in the bathroom when it was flooded.
According to the OED, coot is a middle-english word of unknown origin, and applied originally to various birds resembling or related to the coot I took a picture of. Because of the kind of silly appearance of these birds, I guess it got extended to mean a foolish person. The term "old coot" first appeared in 1852, again according to the OED.
So the bird came first, then the codger. (Now I'll have to look up codger.)
a codger may be an eccentric, usually used with "old" the origin is possibly pejorative, from cadger. a geezer may be a clever old person.
i'd rather be a geezer than a codger, tho codger rhymes with my actual name.
great pictures.
The bathroom still floods. I could have gotten that picture of the rubber floating duckie today but I was too apathetic and involved with finding the source of the pool, which is from under the concrete floor itself. All over from under the concrete floor. Caught it at the beginning and watched it as it pooled up through the concrete.
Those are some handsome wood ducks.
Lovely photos, Huitzil. Those wood ducks really are dandies aren't they? They have a certain arrogant look about them that I find quite attractive--like they know they are the handsomest of all. I loved your story about the domestic duck--reminded me of the time I spent way too long trying to ID a guinea hen with my own Peterson!
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