Wes Smalling
Star-Tribune staff writer

It was a slow day of hunting, one of those mornings I should've stayed in bed. A couple of hours had passed and not a single duck or goose had flown my way. I sat in my makeshift blind on the riverbank, struggling to keep my eyes open, contemplating whether I'd ever had a day of waterfowl hunting that was this slow.

"Man, not a single duck," I said out loud to nobody.

I was so bored I was talking to myself. Yep, time to pick up the decoys and go home.

When I stood up, I saw a shape approaching in the sky. I sat back down.

False alarm. Just a northern harrier. It circled over my decoys, giving them a good long look.

"Those are decoys," I said.

Now I was talking to animals. Great, I'm losing my mind.

At least lots of raptors are cruising along the river these days. Watching them keeps a duck hunter from dying of boredom. They can put on quite a show.

After awhile, finally, a few mallards appeared in the sky. I made a couple calls and they turned my direction. But just before they got to the decoys, they veered away and lit upstream.

Soon another raptor appeared. Bald eagle this time. The giant bird of prey kited above me then swooped down at my decoys like it was trying to scare them off the water. It turned upriver, probably a little perplexed at the nerves of steel in those ducks that had sat so still instead of fleeing in terror.

I've seen eagles swoop at real ducks, then not chase them, like they were scaring them just because they can, because it's fun to be an eagle and not a duck.

The eagle started heading toward the flock of real ducks that were sitting on the water upstream.

"C'mon baldy, give 'em a good swoop," I said, sitting up a little straighter, getting ready for a group of terrified ducks that maybe were about to come my way.

No such luck. The eagle flew lazily past them without paying them any mind.

"Man, this ain't my day," I said.

Then I heard a distant rumble, almost like thunder. I looked downriver and saw a swarm of blackbirds, maybe a thousand of them, heading my way. They flew low along the riverbank in a black cloud in short bursts of speed, stopping every 50 feet or so on the bank for a few seconds, then rising up with the roar of a thousand beating wings, then lighting again on the riverbank, then rising up again and so on, making their way right at me, getting closer and closer.

Hmm, I've never been swarmed by a thousand birds before, I thought. And, um, I don't particularly want to be either...

Just as the black cloud of birds was almost on me I stood up, waved my arms and yelled. The big swarm stopped and retreated to a little sandy beach next to me. I was just about to sit down when ...

Zap! A sharp-shinned hawk streaked into the middle of the blackbirds, scattering them all right at me.

"Holy S---!" I yelled and hit the deck, covering my head and laughing a bit nervously at the oddity of being attacked by every blackbird on the planet. It was like that scene in Hitchcock's "The Birds" when the woman takes cover in a phone booth and she's screaming her head off as the birds crash into the glass.

Not my day, indeed. Chalk one up for the birds.