The Further Adventures of Desperado Duck

Yesterday, as part of my response to Carly's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #30: Things That Float, I told you about Desperado Duck, a promotional rubber duck for the Wigwam Resort that I got at Worldwide Travel years ago. When I took Cayenne and Pepper out to Reid Park on Monday, I brought Desperado along, hoping to photograph him floating along with other ducks.

Little duck in a big pond.

From Desperado Duck and Friends

We didn't have much luck setting up a good shot in the northern pond or the feeder stream, so I decided to try the southern pond. I knew there was a good chance that Desperado Duck would escape into open water and be irretrievable, but I decided to chance it. I set him down carefully next to some rocks, and hoped he would stay put until some big ducks floated nearby.

Desperado Duck swims toward the other ducks.

Success! Sort of. DD wasn't all that close to the pair of ducks that were floating by, but he was at least in the same shot. That when Desperado made a break for it, quickly floating out of reach!

Desperado Duck finally poses for my shot, at the cost of his freedom.

It was totally worth it, I thought, to lose Desperado to the open water in exchange for this blog entry. But I still hoped to get him back somehow.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?

I went to the other side of the pond, but by then Desperado was a tiny yellow spot in the middle of the urban lake, with no sign that he had any intention of coming in to shore. I gave up for the moment and took the dogs to the dog park. Pepper had been whining impatiently, and I could not deny them any longer.

After the dog park, I left the dogs in the car (it was dusk, and no more than 70 degrees) and headed back to the pond, in case Desperado had tried to reach shore. At the south edge of the south pond I found lots of floating trash and leaves and muck. I had high hopes for something yellow I spotted at the very edge, but it was a bread wrapper or something like that. But wait...what's that over there?

Floating with the flotsam and jetsam.

Yes! It's Desperado Duck! I reached down, and he let me take him safely home.

Karen

EMPS: The Aqueous Adventures of Desperado Duck

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #30: Things That Float, I thought immediately of ducks - not just the ones in the duck ponds at Reid Park, but the rubber ducks I have at home. One of them didn't turn up in a quick search, but Desperado Duck, a promotional rubber duck dressed as a caballero, was right where he always is, hanging out near my Madeleine L'Engle books. I took him, along with Cayenne and Pepper, out to Reid Park, to see what trouble we could get into.

When we got to the northern duck pond, other ducks were already demonstrating the fine art of floating, overseen by a black-crowned night heron.

As we know, ducks float because they're made of wood.

From Desperado Duck and Friends

I decided to let Desperado Duck try his luck in the feeder stream between the two ponds. On the first try, he got stuck at the bottom of a tiny waterfall, rolling over and over.

Desperado Duck shoots the rapids -and gets stuck in the waterfall.

On the second try, I might have gotten Desperado close to a pair of the local ducks had not Pepper chosen that moment to lunge into the water herself. The ducks flew away, and Desperado floated rapidly toward the mini-waterfall.

Desperado Duck floats rapidly downstream, and soon falls over.

After this doubtful result, I gathered up Desperado and took a few more pictures of the beautiful and rather unusual heron.

The heron shows little interest in floating. Or ducks.

Then we made out way to where a father and his little boy were feeding the ducks, much to Cayenne's interest. She used Pepper as a step stool to get a better look.

But Cayenne is desperately interested in ducks.

Desperado tried to hang out with the other ducks on land, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it.

Just one of the ducks. Not a very hungry one, though.

Even when I risked putting him in the water near where the heron had been, he stayed next to the dock.

Floating close to home.

But it was all a ruse. Desperado Duck had a greater adventure in mind.

Tomorrow: Part Two - The Getaway!

Karen

EMPS: Ducks and Dogs!

It's virtually impossible to take a good photo of ducks in motion at sunset with an inexpensive digital camera, while holding back two dogs who are straining at their leashes. Just in case you ever wondered!

From my Picasa album Dogs and Ducks

But that's what I tried to do for Carly's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #25: Birds. It was 5:40 PM when I took the dogs to one of the duck ponds in Reid Park, somewhere between the lion in the zoo (I heard it roaring) and the dog park. The dogs found it all very exciting, especially Cayenne. The photographic results are technically not very good, however, what with the low light, the camera shake and the moving ducks, plus I think my lens was dirty. But when I lightened these up, some of them were rather interesting anyway.

It was easier to take the photos before the dogs noticed the ducks. This batch was off to the left, possibly downwind. I liked the cropped edit enough that I've put it through the watercolor and frame effects here.

Carly asked to see a white bird for extra credit, preferably a heron or an egret. No such luck on those, but here's a white domestic duck. I even went through six volumes of physical photos from the 1980s, in a period when we did a lot of traveling, and photographed a lot of birds until the Canon AE1 was stolen. But I didn't find the shots I wanted, and I've previously scanned and posted the best ones of what I did find.

There was an Asian couple feeding the ducks when we arrived, and many of the ducks and coots were on the sidewalk until they saw the dogs. Here is the tail end of the birds' retreat into the water.

The color of the water here is the result of my letting my software's autoenhance function choose the shade of the image. I kind of like the grainy wonkiness of it. It reminds me of some old Life magazine photo that I can't quite remember.

And here we get into my favorite shots of the set, even though they're kind of terrible. I had trouble getting the surging dogs into the shots, especially both at once. But here's Pepper, sort-of scaring the ducks and coots...

...and here's Cayenne, just dying to chase waterfowl, most likely for the first time in her young life.

And here they both are, making the ducks panic again. Again, it's more than a little blurry, but I like the way the ducks and the water look.

There are a few more shots in the Picasa album I set up for this entry; click in any photo to get there, and to see each one full size. And be sure to check out Ellipsis each week for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot topic, with links to the previous week's participants. And check back here tomorrow night for better bird pictures - I hope!

Karen

Update and clarification: the two duck ponds are not in the same part of Reid Park as Miko's Corner Playground dog park, but hundreds of feet away. Here, I've marked up a Google Map to show you:


View Larger Map

The other duck pond and other parts of Reid Park can be seen in my entries Round Robin: Light Moves Over Reid Park and A Reid Park Ramble, continued.