Pine-cone fish and a manky mallard

Beside the pond in Boundary Park, a half-dozen small children, mostly preschoolers, were watching ducklings in a shallow mini-bay. I was carrying a bag of bread crumbs, so I joined the group and added to the fun.

"Mmmm ... ! Multi-grain bread, my fave!"

These were half-grown ducklings, out on their own with parents supervising from a distance. They were obviously accustomed to being fed in this spot, and came out of the water, right up to the kids feet, to pick up stray crumbs. So ... great excitement all around; laughing, squealing, (the kids) splashing, gobbling, sometimes fighting (the ducklings).

And then the fish turned up, as excited as all the rest.

The water is shallow; the carp is scraping his belly in the mud to get at the bread.

The setting sun catches the carp's fan tail, turning it a neon orange.

There is a school of these at Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary; they feed in the shadow of a steep bank, where the sun rarely shines. Even there, the pattern of their scales stands out. Here, half out of water, and in sunlight, it is even more striking.

And don't they look like evergreen cones? Look:

A pine cone, maybe, in wet weather?

Adults, on the fringes of the feeding horde, not hungry enough to challenge the fish.

The splotchy white duck is another hybrid, a "manky mallard".

Brown flowers, blue flowers, and white bird poop.

More Boundary Park photos; the details. Around the lake, first:

Cattails and stripy green water

Rushes. I used to make braids out of these, supposedly to use for something, but I never got that far.

Cross spiders use the rushes as framework for webs hanging over the water. Good mosquito control.

"Sedges have edges; rushes are round." I always have trouble sorting these out, so I was glad to run across this mnemonic, referring to the cross-section of the stems. Rush stems are also pithy, whereas sedges have solid stems.
 

Tall sedges, against the sky.

And up the hill under the trees:

On the floor of the evergreen "forest". (It's about as tiny as the lake below.)

Back yards merge gently, unfenced, into the mowed grass between the houses and the wild bush. This hydrangea is nearing its sell-by date.

Bird "whitewash" and rust spots on salmonberry leaves.

Blackberries are red when they're green. The black ones were delicious.

Birding Boundary Park

Just down the hill from us, there is a little park that we somehow have forgotten to visit. We remedied that this week.

Boundary Park, so called, I think, because it's on the boundary between Surrey and Delta, is a rather tame place, at first glance. A tiny lake, almost circular, well fenced, with a paved pathway all around it. The lawn is mowed, the weeds kept in check. A place to take the kids with their tricycles, or to sit on a bench and watch ducks. We walked quickly; the walkway lies in full sun, and this was a hot afternoon.

But beyond the lake, the park slopes upward, into a meandering green space between housing developments, heavily treed, partly wild, partly tamed. Here we wandered, dodging spider webs, appreciating the shade.

And everywhere, there were birds:

Crow on a rock

Mallards on a rock

Ducks without rocks

Rock without birds

Near this rock under the evergreens, we saw a pileated woodpecker. It wound around and around the trunk of a cottonwood, always disappearing just as the camera focused. I got one very bad, very small photo.

I don't think I've seen one of these around here before.

And there was a seriously endangered star-winged jay:

A backyard bird, very tame.

And not so tame:

Young heron frogging by the lake. Not very happy with us.

More park photos tomorrow.