Why Ducks Float

Feather floating, originally uploaded by ArcherVision.

When shooting in a place that you have been to countless times, you need to start finding new things to capture. Today, that was the case for me at Forest Park. One block away and also one of the largest urban parks in the country, I have hiked, biked, walked and shot my way through every inch of it by now. So, today I took only a long lens and went after the small things. The less obvious. I took a little more time. Occasionally standing in one spot looking for something with detail, or an interesting play on the light.

A wire mesh and stone block wall keeps the far edge of one of the duck ponds from totally backing up into the outlet of a small stream that I have been going to for so long, the edge of the pond has filled in about 30 feet. I guess that would do it, about a foot a year.

Anyways, while I was on that stone wall, crossing to the other side of the end of the pond I found this nice single white feather, most certainly from one of the ducks I shot a little earlier. Maybe it was even from Whitey Beakman. This one lone feather was floting on the green film of tiny little pond things. You know the ones. The ones that look like green scum from a distance, but are really little green floating things. (I would get more specific, but I’m tired.)

Looking closely at this picture you can see how little of the feather is actually touching the surface. Now, I’m no specialist in North American aquatic plant studies, or how the upward force on an object produced by the surrounding liquid or gas in which it is fully or partially immersed, due to the pressure difference of the fluid between the top and bottom of the object, enables the object to float but I think this may have something to do with why ducks don’t sink.