No ducks in the hand, but about 3 million on the wing

One of the few things I miss about my old job is my old coworker, who used to always bring in delectable items from her oven or garden and cheery stories or anecdotes to go with them. When we invited her and her husband over for dinner, she brought all kinds of delicious meats that her dad had hunted and butchered himself. There are few ways to one-up the guy who works for Marin Sun Farms, but that is one of them. After several months of hinting around how much Danny would love to go hunting and maybe because she misses me a little, too, she finally invited us up to her parents' ranch in fabulous Loma Rica, which is a place I'd never heard of but now want to go all the time. This ranch would've been my dad's dream come true. We got to tromp around their 2300 acres of rolling oak woodland, which her dad has hired a private biologist to help him restore, Jack got to chase a dog and throw stones into creeks to his heart's delight, and, I'm a little ashamed to admit, we did some of this:



Okay, I'm not ashamed to admit that we did it, because, you know, when in Rome... but I did feel guilty how much I enjoyed it. No WONDER it's so popular! We spent an afternoon getting windswept and sunburnt and feeling very exhilarated (at the beauty, I tell myself, not the joy-riding. But kind of also the joy-riding).



The men had gone out duck hunting in the early morn, and despite the paucity of ducks, still spent five or so hours in the blind, with only a few opportunities for shots and sadly no hits.  Luckily, there was plenty of duck from a previous hunt so we still got to have a feast. We got a personal tour of the whole ranch property while Jack was supposedly napping and Sadie came along for the ride, serenading us with what has since been dubbed her "opera singing," which mostly involves shrieking at the top of her lungs unexpectedly. It's more joyful than distressed, but still rather alarming and very, very loud. So that was fun. And meanwhile it turned out that the whole time Jack was supposed to have been napping he wasn't, but instead woke up right after we left, in a strange house by himself, poor thing. Thankfully he was in good hands and even got to feed a horse, so he was happy by the time we got back. And before we found out what negligent parents we are, we were treated to a pretty spectacular sunset.



It just kept getting better and better. Unfortunately our weekend up there was cut short by a last-minute work event I couldn't say no to-- but fortunately it was in the same general vicinity so at least it was easy to get to! And I felt like I'd already learned a lot that weekend about the landscape in that area and the culture of rice farming and waterfowl, so I was much better prepared than I otherwise would have been. There is a ranch in Zamora that boasts the largest private wetland restoration in the country, and really gives you hope that wealth can occasionally be harnessed to achieve good things. It felt a little unfair to be there without Jack, because he is the one that gets giddy at even a few stray pigeons, and here I was surrounded by millions of migratory birds flocking to these seasonal wetlands. I tried to take some video for him, but we were far enough away that it didn't really look like much to a camera without a zoom lens. We were still close enough, though, that you could hear the thunderous WHOMP sound of all the birds taking flight at once, like an upside down waterfall, a shimmery wave of black and white across the sky. What signals them to do that, and how do they all receive the signal at the same time? It seems like magic.



I have never seen so many birds in one place. And while my parents may find this post rather amusing, in light of a childhood full of complaints every time they tried to take me bird-watching, I would just like to point out: you clearly took me the wrong places. If you want to hook someone on birds, you don't take them to the forest, where they have to crane their necks and squint to see through the obscuring branches. You take them to the water, where the wildlife on display is literally sitting ducks.