Geese are larger than ducks, and they honk instead of quack. Geese have very long necks while ducks have relatively shorter ones.

When I came home from my walk along the river, I reflected on the birds I saw right before the current sped up around the cluster of rocks. They rotated their wide, flat feet like fan blades underneath their oversized bodies, not seeming to move through the water very quickly at all considering their effort. Their necks were a shimmery sort of blue-green, between jade and teal. Were they ducks or geese? I wondered.

It wasn’t long before I consulted online resources on the subject. I also tried to recall the exact way the birds at the Botanic Gardens looked when I went there a few weeks earlier. Through my research, it seemed that what I had seen at the Botanic Gardens, between the waterfall and the Japanese meditation island, was a raft of ducks and what I saw today was a gaggle of geese. (I looked up the terms raft and gaggle online as well.)

My curiosity around the difference between the two species was piqued by my impression that they were basically very similar. I have an almost automatic reaction, when things are outwardly similar, to try to find distinctions so that I can appreciate their uniqueness.

Through my research, I discovered that geese generally eat grass from meadows while ducks tend to dine on waterfront bugs and weeds; male and female geese tend to be colored the same while male and female ducks are colored differently; duck nostrils are located much higher on their beaks and their beaks are not as sharp. They have different migratory habits. Geese migrate much farther.

I noticed that in my quest to uncover small distinctions between them, I wasn’t paying much attention to the small differences in my reactions to them. Truth is, I reacted differently.

I seem to get more excited when I see geese because I think they are rarer here in northern Illinois. I think of geese as birds of flight, oddly programmed to go on great journeys with their extended families, never declaring anywhere home, eating on the run, and flying with a kind of grace that defies their size.

I tend to think of ducks as nesters, as territorial, as people-like, and when I watch them I think of families, of actual generations within a line, claiming a spot in a river or pond as their permanent home. I noticed I looked at geese with a kind of curiosity and awe and looked at ducks with a more sentimental impulse. I wanted to tag the ones I watched as momma, poppa, and junior.

When I was nineteen, I had a mondo crush on a guy who was maybe a couple years older. To me, he was a cross between Pablo Neruda and the Marlboro Man. In my teenage mind he was kind of a cowboy poet. His thin hips were always covered in old Levi’s. He read Sartre.

I remember becoming entranced with a story he used to tell, about staying out all night with his friends in an area park — in the rain — and describing how wet and miserable they were even though he obviously looked at the experience with great fondness.

He relayed how one of his buds erupted with a statement, a type of koan, they all took as a kind of shared revelation (probably because they were high). Then they disbanded and everyone went home to drier environments.

He said, “A duck was here… but he left.”

When I first observed the two different birds then researched their distinctions, I dwelled on the world outside of me and forgot the importance of my inner world; the small distinctions I could notice in me.

I also seemed to forget perhaps the biggest reason to be grateful for an awareness of any little thing. That moment passes quickly.

Remembering to appreciate one’s inner experience and honor any moment is no small thing.