Seeing a duck
A duck seen in midsummer may be one that cannot fly: ducks shed all their flight feathers at once and spend weeks grounded and drab while new ones grow. Some renewals ask the same of people.
What it may mean
A mallard drake in spring is all glossy green head and white collar. By midsummer he can look almost like a hen, brown and plain, and for three or four weeks he cannot fly at all. Ducks shed their flight feathers all at once and grow a new set together, so for a stretch every year they stay on the water near the reeds, grounded and dull on purpose. It is the price of a full set of new wings. People rarely allow themselves a season like that. A move, a new baby, recovery from a hard year, retraining for different work: each can cost weeks out of the air while something regrows, and it is easy to read that time as failure. A drab duck paddling by the bank in July is simply in the middle of it. The Chinese, a 1903 encyclopedia notes, counted the duck a fortunate bird.
Depending on how you saw it
Ducks heading south in fall
Long lines of ducks leave the same marshes each fall and return in spring. The Karens of Burma sang that the wild duck goes to the land of the dead and comes back, and the dead go and return with it. Which person or place returns to you season after season?
Rain rolling off a duck's back
Ducks spread oil from a gland near the tail through their feathers while preening, and the tightly layered feathers keep water out, so rain beads up and rolls away. Which criticism rolls off you easily, and which soaks straight through?
A drake in his brightest feathers
Mallard drakes wear their glossiest colors from fall into spring, the season when hens choose their mates. By summer the show is packed away. When are you at your most colorful, and who is watching then?
Why it happens in nature
Mallards and other dabbling ducks feed by tipping up in shallow water and keep their feathers waterproof with oil from a gland near the tail. After nesting, ducks molt all their flight feathers at once and cannot fly for several weeks, and mallard drakes take on a drab, henlike eclipse plumage until fall.
What folk beliefs say
China
To the Chinese the duck was a fortunate bird, a 1903 collection explains, and so it was never used for sacrifice.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 624. View the page
Karen (Burma)
The Karens of Burma sang at funerals that the wild duck goes to and returns from the land of the dead: "O duck, the dead go with him; the flat-nosed duck, the dead return with him."
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 147. View the page
Abipone (Gran Chaco)
Small ducks that flew together at night making a loud hissing were considered by the Abipone to be birds of bad fortune.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 624. View the page
To reflect on
When did you last let yourself be grounded long enough for something to grow back?