Evening in the Park

I went to the park in the evening.  It was past 7, and there was not much sunlight.  My original thought was to take a quick walk around the pond and go home.  Well, the park will never let you go that easily.  There are always some objects too amusing to walk away from.

The first thing that caught my attention was a blue heron flying from the large pond to the small one.  I stretched my camera to its limit to get an image of the big bird.  What surprised me next was a wood duck coming along.  It appears that with a big guy standing by, there was no reason for the usually very timid creature to fear.  The heron opened its beak and sent a message around that nobody is allowed to touch his friend under his protection in his territory.  The first wood duck then waved at his friend.  Then the second wood duck came to join the party.  Thanks to the heron that for the first time I was able to be so close to wood ducks.  Regretfully, it was too dark to take pictures with good resolution.

I heard a noise in the bushes along the fence.  It turned out to be a coyote.  The fellow was apparently disappointed not being able to challenge the heron, and gave up his hunting.  It moved fast and I could barely get a couple of pictures.  I was glad, though, to see the healing of the skin disease he  had when I last saw him about 3 weeks ago.

The blue heron was more colorful than the other ones I saw before.  After we stared at each other for a while with no signs of hostility, this fellow seemed to take me as a friend, and said farewell before flying away.

After crossing the bridge over the dam, I heard the singing of frogs and spotted one.  This is the first time I saw a frog here this year.  The back of this frog looked like a mini-hippopotamus to me.  The side view was more typical of a frog.  I said a soft goodbye to the little friend and finished my last walk of April, 2022.