Ducks delight in glare of the supermoon

Maybe the ducks instinctively knew the supermoon was coming, writes Damien Enright

Last night, November 14, as darkness fell and the moon rose in a clear sky, brighter and bigger than I can recall ever seeing it, thousands of duck rode on the black and silver waters of the bay, rafts and drifts of ducks, the most distant like black lines drawn across the surface between me and the streets lights of the silent village stretched along the shore, no traffic passing.

I’d seen them earlier in the late evening light and been amazed at their numbers. I tried counting a section of one hundred, and multiplying up, but it was hopeless. The density in places, and scatterings in others, made my ‘scientific method’ useless. There were many thousands. Like the brightness of the moon above, the sight was new to me. I have never seen even half that number of duck on the bay.