young ducks

[ellenkushner]

It's early autumn. My heroine has been sent to the country, to a place that sure sounds like Normandy to me (lots of apple trees & streams & fields). Here's what I wrote a long time ago:

So I followed the stream into the woods instead, and found a little waterfall and a blackberry thicket with plenty of berries left, and a nest of young ducks (? well something more seasonal anyway).

Are ducks still young in early autumn? I just liked the way the words sounded, and the image - but if I'm about to make a fool of myself to people who know about ducks, can you suggest something else?

(NO ONE in my very erudite writer's group has taken up the challenge - various copies of the page have remained suspiciously pristine, despite my piteous little note in the text. I mean, if they knew the ducks were all right they would have said so, right??)

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In Britain, which isn't that different a climate from Normandy, I wouldn't find it plausible. Blackberries are August, and by August ducks are back to the boring plumage and ducklings are nearly grown. Even if it's possible, it's so unlikely that it would jerk me out of the story. Why not just two ducks just sitting there, the way they do? Or moorhens. Moorhens are cool, and literature could do with more of them, peeping.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Jo, you're a writer - can I get away with ending that sentence, ". . . and a nest of young moorhens."? I've never seen a moorhen, I don't think. But it sounds pretty. (I certainly cannot change it to "...and found a little waterfall and a blackberry thicket with plenty of berries left, and a coupla ducks." - I mean, it scans and all, but it just isn't the right tone, ya know?

I *have* gone berrying down the lanes of Devon in September, and come back with full pails, though.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

No, moorhen chicks are earlier in the year as well.

I can't think of young anything you could find in autumn.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

OK, it came to me last night when I was trying to get to sleep. How about a pair of swans, sailing serenely by, followed by a clutch of half-grown awkward cygnets?

Blackberries start in August and are still there in September unless the rains have rotted them.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oooh - thanks!