Today's sightings: purple and white iris reticulata blooming, Rosco lying on the grass in his yard on my 2nd lap. Fortunately his owner was standing nearby, saw me and said, "You stay right there," to Rosco for which I was much appreciative since he was off-leash. I didn't mean to be rude, but I didn't even glance over to them because I didn't want to trigger Rosco's usual charge to come say hello.
At the bottom of the hill, I stopped on the bridge to look down a shaded creek and saw a large dark bird swoop down. The silhouette didn't look like a crow, and then it seemed to land in the water at the bend. I took a few steps to see better and it was paddling along the surface of the water. A duck!
At least that seemed most likely. It was pretty far away and I didn't have my glasses with me. But then I saw it in profile. Yup. Duck.
Meanwhile there was some incessant chirping that sounded like it was from smaller birds going on. I hadn't seen them but started looking at the rocks in the creek closer to me. Then I caught the movement: two little ducklings that were silhouetted in the shade about twenty feet away.
I bet it's them chirping their heads off because mama flew about fifteen feet downstream past the shallows with rocks (where the babies were) to where the water's a bit deeper.
I watched the ducklings float around, chirping away, until finally they started to swim forward around the rocks. There were a bunch of rocks showing above the water because the brook was shallow there, so there were little eddies the baby ducks had to navigate. In no way would you call it rapids, but I found myself thinking it was still probably pretty scary for them to forge ahead.
All the while, mama patiently swam around saying nothing.
When the little ducks were mostly through the ten feet of shallow rocky section, the chirping stopped. They must be able to see mama, I thought to myself.
15 years ago on TTaT: Not so much about Star Wars
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