Thursday, April 4, 2013

Elusive Duck, Social Turtles,

and Invisible Frog

String Too Short to Tie

 The sun breaks through the cloud cover!

Stroll over to the pond.  Redhead duck!

Feed the turtles.

I am moderately pleased with the shot of the duck.  Elusive critter, he is, given to trying to avoid observation.  This picture shows the diagnostic blue bill with black tip.  Last year we had several whistling ducks around the pond.  Haven't seen them this year.

I do have better turtle pictures.  All one does is sit on the bench and they show up, sometimes as many as a dozen of them.  Well, that is if one throws little cookie bits into the water!

As I was sitting on the bench thinking I had never seen any frogs around the pond, I concluded that perhaps the turtles had eaten them all.  Wrong.   No more thought than from a nearby clump of bull rushes, "Brr-rump, brr-rump" in a deep bass register!

9 comments:

Shelly said...

That is a nice shot of the duck- you must have been very patient to get it. I never thought of turtles liking cookies, but it does stand to reason they would!

Anonymous said...

I like turtles tho they aren't much in the personality department - we had big box land turtles as pets...mostly they clunked around the house and left a trail of little turtle turds...and annoyed the dog. The duck photo is very good - such a red head!

vanilla said...

Shelly, lucky shot. I wanted to give bits of raw hamburger to the turtles, but BBBH vetoed that.

Grace, you had pet turtles! When I was a lad my best buddy had a pet turtle he named "Oscar" but when the turtle laid an egg, my Dad told Don he would have to change the name to "Oscarina". Hmm. Sounds like a musical instrument.

Secondary Roads said...

Social turtles or chow begging turtles?

Anonymous said...

I scanned a photo of one of the turtles - with a little bit of luck this link might work - http://dragonsalley.tumblr.com/image/47114097173

vanilla said...

Chuck, social, maybe. I think they'd come over to visit you if you sat on the bench. But then, perhaps that would be a conditioned response.

Grace, thanks. The link worked fine. Good looking old turtle!

Lin said...

HA! Those froggies will fool ya every time! I don't think turtles eat frogs, do they? I imagine them to be too slow to grab one--but what do I know?

I like turtles. I'd love to have one in the pond, but they eat the water plants--the expensive water plants. That is not allowed in my pond.

Vee said...

I love all of your nature pictures! Packing has replaced the internet the past few days, but I'll try harder to stay in touch through your blog.

vanilla said...

Vee, I enjoy finding things to "shoot." Packing is not a task I envy you for. Best of luck!