Man, I hate finding things out too late, but at least this time I’m not, though it’s certainly cutting it close. I just happened to check out the calendar for Sylvan Heights Bird Park and discovered that tomorrow, January 17th, is a whole new holiday (for realsies): World Waterfowl Day. It’s too late for us to make explicit plans, and while the park is now just over an hour away, it’s been cold as hell and not the kind of weather to do outings of this nature.
That said, we have a decent-sized pond out back, so the opportunity to find something is right there, and there’s also a state park not quite 20 kilometers away too – we’ll see what happens. I apologize for posting this so late, but I literally just found out about this before I started typing. I did, however, already have an image in the blog folder that would work.
It was a few days back when some mallards (Anas platyrynchos) were cruising around feeding in the close portion of the pond, and while they were spending a lot of time with their heads under water, I crept closer. This is just after they realized someone was standing in the middle of the yard watching them; the male has noticeably stood higher and more alert, before they began swimming to a safer distance.
I’m still wondering how I never heard anything about the new holiday until now, and trying to determine how I can subscribe to news of this nature – without, of course, resorting to the utterly worthless bullshit that is social media. But it’s now in my personal calendar at least, so you’ll get far more warning next year.