On the drive back from a blood test early this morning, I stopped to down a breakfast bar while I scanned the still waters above a local dam for ducks. The waterfowl didn't disappoint and, in short order, I was watching either a female or immature male Goosander—I'm not good enough to separate the two possibilities—kick off the fishing season. Of course, this is a silly notion: mergansers don't have a fishing season... they're always angling for dinner. And this one, right before my eyes, was angling well. Maybe, too well. I thought it had snagged a large perch, but the more I looked, the less sure I was of the prey's identity. It might have been a species of sunfish, but whatever the Goosander had caught, the bird was having trouble swallowing its meal. The bird's serrated beak was no help: those "teeth" are for holding prey, not chewing it. So, persistently, the duck tried to position the uncooperative fish every which way to get it down the proverbial hatch. I never did see it disappear, but I noticed a bulge in the Goosander's neck. Success or not, the duck was soon diving again in the shallows—the eternal angler.