The duck pond

Quintessentially English, the village duck pond is an important part of our heritage.
Really, it is not a village pond but more a community focus because you are just as likely to find such ponds in towns and cities as you are in small villages and the countryside.
Today's is in the heart of a town just a few yards from a busy road junction and a main shopping thoroughfare.
Yet none of that appears to bother the ducks who habit it. On such ponds too you'll often find other species of wildlife and the sheer presence of the water is part of an ecological pattern of its own and includes the plants around it and the possible other creatures like toads and frogs, sometimes even small fish and maybe even rodents.
Well managed, a pond in any community is part of our fabric for life, although if you are to ask me when a pond becomes a lake I'll be stumped for a definition.
What is important is that water spots like this in communities must be preserved and never be allowed to fall victim of development unless it is retained as part of the development for generations to come just as it has been for centuries past.