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Every year, hundreds of artists across the country compete to have their paintings of ducks or other waterfowl featured on a U.S. stamp. Davis Dunavin of member station WSHU visited this year's Federal Duck Stamp Contest in Greenwich, Conn.
DAVIS DUNAVIN, BYLINE: In a hall at the Bruce Museum, a crowd is at the edge of their seats watching as hundreds of paintings of waterfowl are paraded out one at a time.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Entry number 123.
DUNAVIN: A row of five judges examine each one slowly and methodically.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Please vote.
DUNAVIN: Sometimes the paintings can be dramatic - 123 is a good example.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Gasp).
DUNAVIN: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put this contest on since 1934. Anyone can buy a duck stamp and use it on their mail, but you have to buy one to get a duck hunting license. That's made these stamps a long tradition for hunters.
JOE HAUTMAN: When we were kids, our dad collected duck stamps and was a hunter.
DUNAVIN: Joe Hautman is a six-time winner. He and his two brothers all paint duck stamps, and they've all won at least a few times.
HAUTMAN: It's a requirement of hunting ducks to know what they look like 'cause you have to know what you're shooting at.
DUNAVIN: And Joe really knows ducks.
HAUTMAN: I live on a little lake, and I - you know, I put out wood duck boxes and see whole generations of wood ducks and mallards.
DUNAVIN: Each year, artists choose from five waterfowl, usually ducks, but sometimes a swan or a goose sneaks in. The hooded merganser is in about half the paintings this year. It has these googly eyes and a big crest on its head. But Joe's partial to a rare duck called the spectacled eider, the first duck he ever won with.
HAUTMAN: It has two black rings around its eye, very prominent black rings. And it's got a - like, a - almost looks like a blanket over its bill and, like, a - almost, like, a mane of green feathers. And this was one thing I got from actually looking at mounted or stuffed spectacle eider specimens, which I found up in a university in Canada. It's a very unusual-looking duck.
DUNAVIN: The crowd skews younger than you might expect. Some people here are in their 20s and 30s. The Duck Stamp Contest has a surprisingly big social media following from young competitors like Kira Sabin. They've never won, but they've gotten millions of views on TikTok.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
KIRA SABIN: This is why I won't win the Federal Duck Stamp Competition. I chose a weird duck. People's opinions - to each their own - but ugly duck bias is definitely a thing. There's a reason that normal-looking ducks have won, like, more than six times, and spectacled eider has won once.
DUNAVIN: The winner this year is entry 123, the one that provoked those gasps. And as it turns out, it's a spectacled eider - two of them, in fact, with snow-capped mountains in the background. It's gorgeous. Greg Mensik, one of the judges, agrees.
GREG MENSIK: I've seen the spectacle eiders in their natural habitat, and to me, that was a painting that just popped right from the canvas and will make an excellent duck stamp.
DUNAVIN: The painter is Adam Grimm of South Dakota, now a three-time winner. We'll start seeing his spectacled eider on our mail in the middle of next year, and all of the money from those stamp sales will go to preserving the lakes, forests and other lands these ducks call home. For NPR News, I'm Davis Dunavin in Connecticut. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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