A Texas city girl in a small New England town …
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This afternoon, I took another peek at the leaves in Echo Lake Park. And with sadness, I have to say, the “Leaf Peeping Peak Season” is over. Here and there are trees still dressed in Autumn leaves. A lot of them are bare, now. I can tell that November has arrived in New England. Well, I will enjoy what is left for the rest of the season, before I experience my first real Winter in almost two decades.
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~ 11/01/2021 ~
If someone at a park feeds bread to ducks, there are Mallards in the fray. Perhaps the most familiar of all ducks, Mallards occur throughout North America and Eurasia in ponds, parks, wilder wetlands, and estuaries. The male’s gleaming green head, gray flanks, and black tail curl arguably make it the most easily identified duck. Mallards have long been hunted for the table, and almost all domestic ducks come from this species.
The American coot (Fulica americana), also known as a mud hen, is a bird of the family Rallidae. Though commonly mistaken for ducks, American coots are only distantly related to ducks, belonging to a separate order. Unlike the webbed feet of ducks, coots have broad, lobed scales on their lower legs and toes that fold back with each step, which facilitates walking on dry land. Coots live near water, typically inhabiting wetlands and open water bodies in North America. Groups of coots are called a “raft” or “cover”. The oldest known coot lived to be 22 years old.
The big, black-necked Canada Goose with its signature white chinstrap mark is a familiar and widespread bird of fields and parks. Thousands of “honkers” migrate north and south each year, filling the sky with long V-formations. However, as lawns have proliferated, an increasing number of these grassland-adapted birds are remaining in urban and suburban areas year-round, where some people regard them as pests.
The exotic Mute Swan is the elegant bird of Russian ballets and European fairy tales. This swan swims with its long neck curved into an S and often holds its wings raised slightly above its back. Although they’re numerous and familiar in city parks and in bays and lakes in the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic, Mute Swans are not native to North America. Their aggressive behavior and voracious appetites often disturb local ecosystems, displace native species, and even pose a hazard to humans.
Mute Swans were first brought to North America to decorate ponds and lakes in towns and cities, and that’s still the best place to find these familiar waterfowl. You may also find them on shallow wetlands, lakes, rivers, and estuaries within the scattered range where they’ve become established in the wild.
Under The Harvest Moon 