What the duck?!

This qualifies as a fauna interlude.


For the record, we do not have a pond on our property.  Our neighbors across the street do have a pond, visible from our living room windows, from which we have been visited by a variety of disoriented critters over the years.

View from the living room window

The first year we moved in we were besieged by frogs.  We had not yet landscaped, and our front lawn sloped uninterrupted all the way down to the road across from the pond -- just an easy hop away from their recent emergence into four-legged maturity. They covered the lawn and driveway, copulating madly and driving the two dogs we had back then into a frenzy.  Then there were the turtles -- big mean snappers -- who methodically dug nests under the shrubs and plodded back across the road in a death defying slow march, daring the teens who hot rod down our hill to reduce them to a smear.


Then all the local fauna seemed to adjust to our new topography, and we've largely been left to our own devices for the last three years.  Sure we have plenty of resident rodents -- squirrels, chipmunks, and the odd field mouse.  But we seem to have reached a point of equilibrium where everyone knows their place.


Until today.


I woke up this morning, and as I always do first thing, I checked the weather and general ambiance by opening the slider in our bedroom that faces the hill in the back.  And saw him:

I believe this is a male mallard.  He spent several minutes waddling around, and then settled down behind the dicentra for a spell, just checking things out.  It was raining rather hard -- the kind of weather that is, as they say, "fine if you're a duck."  So I suppose it shouldn't be so surprising to actually find a real duck in one's backyard.  Except, as I mentioned, you don't generally see them this far away from a body of water.  I've actually never seen them in our neighbor's pond, either, though on the other side of our neighbor's property is Lake Waccabuc -- one mile long and about half a mile wide.  The name actually means "Long Pond" in the Native American dialect of this area's original inhabitants.  And that's where you often see ducks parading with their brood.


Mr. Mulch also said he had seen this fellow, along with what appeared to be his mate, visiting the front yard a couple of days ago.  Hmmm... . Either they're looking for a little private time and space -- the Greta Garbo version of ducks -- "I just want to be alone..."
Or we may wind up with our very own little family of fluffy ducklings somewhere up on the hill.


I'll keep you posted.