Soft Landing

This heron had to keep moving from fishing spot to fishing spot because there was high canoe/kayak traffic on his private waterway.  It didn't seem to deter him at all.

There was some sort of duck crisis on the water today.  I heard a panicked cry which sounded more like a bird than a duck but it was not anything I'd ever heard before and it continued so I went to investigate.  What I saw was a mallard flailing around on the water while emitting a high-pitched cry.  I couldn't see what was going on but the poor thing was zooming around in circles, flapping and crying.  All I could think of was some animal had found the mallard babies in the tall grass and was doing something terrible.  The duck was clearly in distress but I don't know why.  Fortunately, it calmed down after about 10 minutes, but it wasn't pleasant to hear or see an animal clearly frightened like that.  It was very upsetting but I'll probably never find out what happened.  I need to find someone who knows a whole lot more about duck behavior than I do.