Stories from the Sea · Ocean River Institute

Belonging to the River

On an Icelandic river below Lake Mývatn, a duck built to vanish into moving water offers a quiet lesson about what it means to belong, not merely to occupy a place, but to become part of its relationships.

By Dr. Rob Moir  |  Ocean River Institute

The harlequin drake should have been impossible to miss. Instead, he vanished.

In May, I drove along the shore of an ice-covered lake in Iceland on my way to Lake Mývatn. The lake narrowed into a rushing river. I turned left, crossed a bridge, and in the quiet pool below caught sight of a boldly patterned black-and-white duck. I pulled over.

A pair of Barrow’s goldeneyes serenely swam by the bridge. The drake’s white breast contrasted with his black back, broken by three flashes of white on the folded wing. On his dark head, a jaunty white crescent curved between eye and bill. By his side, the female was subdued browns and greys.

Further upstream, I climbed a grassy mound for a better look. A brown duck peered over the grass, revealing only one eye. Then came a cluck as ducks left the shore. Six harlequin ducks steered along the shore where the water eddied and lay flat instead of tumbling by. I followed for a better look. In a line, they circled back to the chocolate-brown promontory with a nearly squeaky chatter. This soft call, without quacking, has earned harlequins the nickname “sea mice”.

The hens stood on a point of land that separated the rushing river from flatwater. The drakes swam nearby. I had not seen them across the water from the bridge because they were invisible to my searching eye. The females’ brown breasts matched, blended, and disappeared into the brown of the cut bank.

Then, as though someone had thrown cold water over me, I finally saw him. Not merely the duck, but the design. The white crescents on his face, the curved streaks along his flanks, the broken patches across his back, all repeated the ribbons of foam streaming around the rocks. He had never been meant to stand apart. He belonged to the river.

This river offered more than a place to raise young and was more than habitat. It was relationship. The ducks, the current, the rocks, the banks, and the dark peat soils completed one another. None made full sense alone.

The last person one expects to fit seamlessly into a situation is a harlequin.

Yet, as spring progresses into the summer breeding season, these six harlequin ducks will be joined by hundreds. They thrive because Lake Mývatn produces immense hatches of midges, cold rivers tumble endlessly over stone, and dark peat soils store water and nourish the surrounding land.

To belong is more than to occupy a place. It is to become part of its relationships.

Today, we often imagine ourselves as individuals moving through a world of separate things. Nature tells a different story. Life flourishes through relationships.

Like harlequin ducks, there will be times when we must leave sheltered shores and venture into turbulent water. We will need to keep calling to one another, not loudly, but often enough to stay together. We may look calm above the surface even as our feet paddle furiously beneath.

Like the harlequin duck, we flourish when we belong to one another and to the places that sustain us.

SEVENSEAS Media · Conservation Journalism for the Ocean