Coming home from Michelle's Diner!

My cousin, Michelle, lives just west of us if you go down the shoreline. This is the cousin that has an unique way with most animals.  Michelle can befriend any critter that flies, swims or crawls on the face of the earth!   She is also the one that feeds the masses of geese and ducks.  Every morning and then again every evening, the birds start to either fly in to her yard or they swim up to the shore and walk up the lawn to her house.  They know that a lovely meal will be set out just for their enjoyment.  Sometimes it looks like every duck and goose in the entire state is waiting at her door for a handout!

All of these ducks made me ponder just where they go after leaving her place.  I could see some flying past the pier and knew that several had nested in the Bayou but I had no idea how many called this place "Home".  Then this evening, I heard a familiar quacking.  The ducks had finished eating and flew back to the Bayou for the evening.  Wow!  That sure sounds like a lot of ducks!  It was getting rather late which made it quite difficult to see through the marsh grass.  The Bayou winds this way and that through the marsh.  Some of the canals are just a few feet wide but other areas are nigh on a hundred feet across.  The ducks had landed in one of the wide open spaces and were following some of the smaller canals to their nesting grounds.

I was curious to see just how near the ducks would come.  Surely they stayed closer to the open water.  I stood still just listening to the soft quacks.  The ducks were obviously keeping tabs on each other as they rounded the twists and turns of the Bayou.  Suddenly, a large group appeared right in front of me!  I snapped a few pictures and then started to count.  The first bunch had eleven ducks!  I could hear more around the corner but they did not come any closer.  The group of eleven settled in for the night on a strip of the shoreline.  The quacks quietened to a soft "duck whisper".  Obviously, each group has its own bedding site and from the sounds of it, there were several groups of about a dozen each. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, these same ducks will make the trip to Michelle's house for breakfast!  I guess my Bayou is just their sleeping quarters..Michelle feeds them!  And from the looks of the ducks, she feeds them quite well!