Summer

Back at Greenlake, everyone has pretty much grown up, and I can no longer distinguish the adults from the babies (geese or mallard.)  The black duck has only one kid still with her, a dark-brown baby with a white patch on the neck.  She seems very protective, keeping in the underbrush, and generally away from where people are.  I mention this because she was always out and about before she had offspring, and the mallards tend to be less secretive.  She also seems beleaguered and hungry.  I always look for her, and when I found her over the weekend, and put down my coffee cup to take a photo, she ran out and pecked at the cup.  Someone had been feeding her birdseed, she ate it like she'd been starving.  When I ran into him, he mentioned it was the fourth time he'd fed her that day.  She's feral, a former domestic duck, but has been at the lake for a few years.

She's my favorite duck.

A little further on, I stopped for a goose crossing.  One at a time, they hopped out of the water and up the embankment, crossing the walking path on the way to the bigger lawn.  A parade of geese.  At first people walked through them, but toward the end, people stopped on either side, and watched.  Close to 80, I think, no longer in the smaller family groups of the breeding season.

Early in the morning, a rabbit ran across my path as I headed toward work, hadn't seen them here before.  And at night, an abundance of bats.