Walking Around the Pond

Mr S took me on a Pathetic-Sick-Person Outing this morning so I could see something besides the inside of my brain. And what a treat it was! We had the best time at this neighborhood pond, a little bit of water that we’ve walked around many times in the past. Today we were slow, and stopped to sit and stare, and then took  another turn around the perimeter just for luck, and we saw so many birds!! Lucky for us, just as we were leaving we met a young woman with binoculars who knew the names of things, so I managed to learn what I was looking at. In the space of under an hour we saw: Canada geese, mallards, hybrid ducks, white barnyard ducks, a commotion of coots, ruddy ducks, ring necks, buffleheads, a green heron, a common merganser, double-crested cormorants, and crows. That’s not counting the songbirds that were proclaiming the beauty of the day, and a fair number of turtles that were sunbathing in the reeds. And I didn’t blow my nose once while we were out!


The main image is a Green Heron, a first sighting for both of us. The Extra shows the male and female Ring Neck on the left, and a female common merganser on the right (in the shade and in the sun).