I just thought I would pass along an interesting start to my day. As many of you know I have one of the smaller ponds out here ( between 1/10th and 1/4 acre pond ).
I go up at 5 am and looked out the window to see two mallards fighting in the pond over a female. As soon as they calmed down and the one male moved off a bit, a female hooded merganzer shows up and hooks up with the pair of mallards, sort of like a very odd threesome. They swam around for a bit and then the Blue Heron shows up and starts fishing a few feet away from them.
Now I have the mallards on the floating Island, the hooded diving and eating god knows what, the frogs hiding from the heron who is after all of them and then a pair for Kingfishers show up darting back and forth and back and forth grabbing bugs and minnows from the surface.
I though man that little pond is soooo full is there any room for the fish? Thats when the Canada Geese ( 2 pairs show up ) Land on the pond and nearly run over everything in their way. They get out and start walking the shore and doing what they do best eating and dumping.
Just then my two pair of wood ducks land on the tree above the pond and look down as if to say, who did't invite us to the party. About a minute later they drop down into the water and do what they do best which is trolling the shore and weeds.
Now I have more birds in and around the pond than I have fish in the pond. they are bumping into each other left and right. I was having a good chuckle when off from the outlet of the pond comes a pair of coyote who decided to drop in on the gathering.
Within 2 seconds all the birds fly off with such a whoosh that I had whitecaps on the pond for all of the movement. Because of the massive take off ( NYC or Atlanta airfields don't have that much traffic at one point ) The coyotes hightail it off like something stung them in the butts.
As the dust and the feather clear the only thing left was the two mallards who then decided to come off the floating island and come up to my back steps and walk up to the garage and try to get into my bag of fish chow.
Thus was the first half hour of my day!!
I am used to all of the varieties coming to the pond but never all at once. I have about 14 ponds within 4 miles of my house and Lake Ontario just about 300 yards from my house. I am still trying to figure out what drew everyone to my place this am. Do Birds have "RAVE" parties that we dont know of???
Who knows but made for an interesting start to the day.
