In honor of the little hen whose showier mate gets all the attention, here is a painting of a wood duck hen in all her subtle beauty along a little stream where I used to fish for bluegills and smallmouth bass when I was a kid, and where I would sometimes encounter a pair of wood ducks savoring a secluded, cool swim in the more gentle backwaters.

I have depicted the hen with two plants commonly found along such streams : the rustic brown-eyed Susan, and a favorite backwoods plant called jewel weed.

Jewelweed is a soothing remedy to treat both poison ivy and bee stings, and one of the most prized food sources for Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds in the Eastern United States, who will actually go to war with each other to defend patches of these delicate looking plants. Jewelweed has another fascinating attribute, one that make it beloved to children - and that is its unique seed capsules, which spring open explosively when touched, hurling their seeds in all directions.

The wood duck was a popular motif in the art of the Native Americans of the Southeast, especially in the Mississippian culture that was centered in the Mississippi River Valley. Their potters would make clay vessels that featured the sculpted head of a wood duck on one side and a tail on the other side, and some of these hollow duck heads were more than mere decoration and were fashioned with a clay ball inside to double as little rattles.