The Windmill That Wore a Duck
A mallard built her nest on top of my stock-tank windmill, and for one long spring the whole ranch ran on her own schedule.
On my place northeast of Amarillo, I have a windmill that is older than I am. It pumps water out of the ground into a stock tank, and it has done so faithfully through droughts, blizzards, and at least one tornado that took the neighbor's chicken house. I oil it every spring. I climb the tower with a wrench and a can of grease, and I have always felt a kinship with it, the way a man does with a very old dog.
One April, I went out to oil it and found a visitor. A mallard duck had built a nest on the platform just below the wheel, a tidy affair of grass and feathers, and she sat on it with a look of fierce ownership. I said good morning. She did not answer. I explained that I had to service the windmill. She fluffed her feathers. I leaned over the platform to check the gearbox, and she leaned over to check me, and I came to understand that the negotiations were not going in my favor.
The windmill kept turning, which is the thing that amazed me. Every time the wind came up, the wheel spun and the pump creaked, and she sat there with the whole machine going around her like a carnival ride. The cattle drank, the tank filled, and the duck did not move. I phoned the Extension office and asked if there was a rule. A very nice woman told me that nesting waterfowl are protected and that I should leave the nest alone until the ducklings were out. I said that sounded about right. The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension has good advice on this sort of thing.
So I waited. For four weeks, I did not oil the windmill. I watched it from the ground with binoculars, and I carried my wrench around in the truck like a man at a funeral. Then one morning in May, I came out to find nine tiny ducklings on the ground, lined up behind their mother, marching toward the tank. She led them straight in, and they paddled around like it had been a plan from the start. I oiled the windmill that afternoon. The farm.FM ranching stories ran a note on it, and a reader sent me a card calling me the man who works for ducks, which I framed.
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