You want to write about the Bufflehead and her smug little grin. If you do, it should tell us something about being human. You wish to simply share how she nests in tree cavities hollowed out by Northern Flickers. You want to tell us without thinking about how your childhood home was built where wickiups used to stand. Maybe you want to forget about the remains of a Kiikaapoi man your neighbor discovered while trying to perfect his landscaping. As a child, you speculated he died because the US Army killed many bison. You prefer thinking about the aquatic duck and her buffalo-shaped head, nesting high in a tree hollow—about her chicks hopping from the nest hole and falling like rocks. Somehow, they survive, and somehow your kids have too—most of them. There are active shooter drills, and juvenile suicide rates increasing rapidly, but you’re grateful for the kids you do have.
Most women lose a pregnancy or two; with clutches of four to seventeen, you wonder if a mother bufflehead grieves her losses like you. Does she mourn when squirrels raid her nests the way you cried after your miscarriage? Or does she shrug and say, “Bummer, it wasn’t meant to be.” That’s what they wanted when they told you everything happens for a reason. You’re no ornithologist, but when you see her smiling, you swear, she’s masking her pain. You try to mask.
Buffleheads are monogamous. Apparently, that’s rare for ducks. Perhaps it is for humans too. Couples who experience miscarriage are at greater risk of ending their relationship, but he doesn’t want to talk about that. Instead, you listen to Buffleheads. They speak to each other in raspy grrrks—the males garnering female attention by water skiing. This splash allows the Bufflehead to be recognized from considerable distances. Humans aren’t like that, but you still want to write about it. Maybe you miss the carefree feeling of infatuation. Till death do us part is a long time with both partners grieving in different ways. There is something about a bird spending its entire life on water (except for the time she spends nesting in trees) that feels less daunting. For two and a half years the Bufflehead swims and preens. She finds love or something like it, raises her family, and subsists on insects and mollusks. Maybe she dies at the talons of a Cooper’s hawk. Maybe leeches infect her respiratory tract. Or a hunter kills her. She’s easy to decoy, enjoying the company of other Buffleheads, fake or real.
Sometimes you remember the Kiikaapoi man, how his grave remained, and coneflowers grew from his corpse-enriched soil instead of the Bradford pear your neighbor wished to plant. The flowers have proliferated, and the bison population is increasing. Sometimes you wonder if when hunters point their barrels at Buffleheads, they think about death. Perhaps, like you, they don’t want to think about humanity, just a waterfowl in a marsh with a smug little grin.
Christina Ray Henry is a Midwest-born writer. Her work has appeared in New Feathers Anthology, Intrinsick, (mac)ro(mic), and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her children likely wish she spoke less about birds.