Early one morning in rural Wisconsin during the late autumn of 1995 I watched as about 20 American Black Ducks attempted to land on a bitumen road that was slick with
black ice. While the leading few made a hard landing those following appeared to throw out the air brakes so they almost stopped in mid air before heading off upstairs again. The landed ducks immediately sprang into the air and were up, up and away.
A following group of smaller duck species also made heavy landings. These little guys opted to run along the road flapping in order to get airborne. Trouble was their
feet kept losing traction on the icy surface so they couldn’t gain liftoff. But they soon demonstrated that corvids don’t have an exclusive franchise on avian intelligence as they moved to the gravel road verges where they effected a successful run-up and
continued flying south.
John Layton
Holt.
