Hellsborough Exposed

A quacker doesn't so much fly as relocate: one moment it's dabbling at the pond edge looking entirely unbothered, the next it's fifteen feet away and airborne, with no launch anywhere in between. I tried to film one once and got the duck, a blur, then the duck somewhere else. Give a nesting one a wide, slow berth, or you'll find a mallard attached to your shin and no memory of it crossing the distance.

Down in Storrs Wood, the corner of the Wisewood where the murk lies lazy and soaks you through, I found a dead Dyapnid in the ditch and, a few paces on, the carcass of a pied grizzler; they'd fought each other into the ground, or the grizzler took on a whole pack. Shad gave the grizzler a wide berth. Nothing is interested in a dead grizzler, and I'd bet its body is still laid there a month from now.