The ducks are up to something....
So I’m biking home through Hagley Park (a huge park in the middle of Christchurch) this evening at about 7.30pm.
It’s a really dark autumn night, and there is a very cool southerly wind rustling through the piles of autumn leaves that have accumulated over the past few days….
There is absolutely no one around.
I cycle out from under the rows of acorn trees and start to cross the playing fields area. It’s a long stretch of open ground with one light in the mid point, which happens to be next to the only tree on this section.
As I get closer to the light I notice all these tiny black shapes moving around on the ground. New Zealand doesn’t really have much in the way of small animals that like to hang out in large groups under trees in the middle of urban areas, so it definitely catches my attention.
I cycle towards it, fixated on the increasingly frantic movements, and amazed at the number of shapes. Suddenly I’m upon them! It’s a mob of ducks just hanging out on the path under the tree! There honestly must have been a hundred of them.
It’s weird enough that there would be such a large groups of ducks hanging out in an area that is a good 300m from the nearest body of water. But to all be hanging out under the tree? I’m reasonably sure that ducks don’t eat acorns, and I can’t think of any reason that such a large number of them would hang out under this one tree.
And they quacked like they were up to something!
It’s a really dark autumn night, and there is a very cool southerly wind rustling through the piles of autumn leaves that have accumulated over the past few days….
There is absolutely no one around.
I cycle out from under the rows of acorn trees and start to cross the playing fields area. It’s a long stretch of open ground with one light in the mid point, which happens to be next to the only tree on this section.
As I get closer to the light I notice all these tiny black shapes moving around on the ground. New Zealand doesn’t really have much in the way of small animals that like to hang out in large groups under trees in the middle of urban areas, so it definitely catches my attention.
I cycle towards it, fixated on the increasingly frantic movements, and amazed at the number of shapes. Suddenly I’m upon them! It’s a mob of ducks just hanging out on the path under the tree! There honestly must have been a hundred of them.
It’s weird enough that there would be such a large groups of ducks hanging out in an area that is a good 300m from the nearest body of water. But to all be hanging out under the tree? I’m reasonably sure that ducks don’t eat acorns, and I can’t think of any reason that such a large number of them would hang out under this one tree.
And they quacked like they were up to something!