“Duck Pond”
This picture makes it fairly clear why I think of this place as the Duck Pond. Technically, I'm not sure that it really is a pond. It's more like the estuary of a stream, or perhaps it's an inlet, except that a hundred yards or so downstream, there's a small dam at Wickopecka Road, so perhaps this is a man-made pond.

The ducks you see here always take to the water at the first sign of me. Had I not appeared, at least half of them would have been happily sitting on the bank where I was standing to take this picture.
At right is a closer look at the ducks. I have to confess to a general feeling that once you seen one duck you seen them all. I suppose when I say that I mean Mallard Ducks. There are interesting other kinds of ducks around, but we don't see too many of them.

Actually, that reminds me! I did see an interesting duck here just the other day. Let me see if I can find its picture. Yes here it is. I took this on July 2nd, just before I discovered the green heron.

A look in Sibley's suggests that perhaps this duck isn't as interesting after all. It looks as though it is merely an escaped domestic duck of some kind. Still it was half as large again as any of the Mallards, so it certainly got my attention!

Today, July 8th, my attention was grabbed by an altogether smaller duck. By far the smallest present, it looked a lot cuter from a distance. Captured here with my telephoto lens, it looks rather mangy.

It also seemed to be rather unpopular with the other ducks who shunned it every time it tried to approach them. Still, with all that visible nutrition at the edge of the pond, who knows how big and strong this little fellow will become?
Let me leave you with a couple more scene-setting pictures. The one at left is looking west (upstream). The bridge carries the footpath I've mentioned in a number of my narratives. On the other side is yet another manmade pond. That's where the little blue heron and the green heron were last week (there's still been no more sign of the little blue, I'm afraid).

Earlier in the year, when most of the ducks we saw today were ducklings, that's where they spent most of their time. As they grow older, they tend to move to this side of the little bridge.
Turning around and looking east the overall impression is of greenery. What you can't see just around the bend to the right is the Foodtown store on Sunset Avenue.

The great blue heron I spotted the other day was on that far bank, at just about the middle of the picture. You can see how easy it would be for even a large bird like that to camoflage itself.

Here's a closer look. You can just about make out the sunken branch behind which the great blue had taken its position.

Each time I come here, I spend a long time looking slowly along the bank and up in the trees, just in case one of them is hiding in plain view!