dragoness_e | Last spring at the park

Rather belated pictures of the birds at LaFreniere Park from last March (2010).

Duck kerfluffle

Sordid duck affairs that would make a Law & Order:SVU episode if it were humans...

Are you sure that's water?

One of our local Cayuga ducks, a lovely black-green domestic breed.

Flotilla

There was this one mallard hen with eleven ducklings following her around. They stayed in a fairly tight huddle, and she kept diving and chasing something away from the ducklings.

Staying close

A raft of ducklings

Those are cypress tree roots, by the way.

Find the duck in this picture

Black swan, preening

White swan, preening

I bet you can't curve your neck in a figure-8.

That feather in back itches. Let me tend to it

And thaaat one, too!

Check those underarms, too.

The black swans have another family; it looks like the park will have at least one breeding pair every year, though I don't know if it's the same pair. If this keeps up, we'll have an awful lot of swans. I understand that in the wild, they have flocks of thousands in Australia.

This year's cygnet crop

Spring Turtles

Red-Ear Turtle?

Then we had these two idiot Canadian geese who decided that the formal garden in the center of the park was The Very Best Place To Nest.

Nesting geese do not like visitors; no, they do not want your bread.