After two good days of waterfowl watching here in northern New Jersey, I fell asleep last night doubly grateful for the down that keeps us warm. As usual, the last pictures to scroll across the inside of my eyelids were of the day’s birds: of red-breasted mergansers already courting on the shore, ruddy ducks huddled in sleeping masses on the ponds, Atlantic brant grazing on coastal lawns, the two drake Eurasian wigeon that startled me so happily on the Shark River.
I slept well, but was awakened very early in the middle of a dream about goldeneye. But wait — I was awake, and I could still hear their wing whistle. Could it be?
No, of course not.
Gellert, wearing the Christmas finery he’s so proud of, had simply shifted in his sleep.
Who knows? He might have been dreaming of ducks, too.
