Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks

We have been very busy the past few days and had a couple of unexpected visitors! Nothing real specific, just a few small things here and there.  Cleaning a few things, wrapping up baseball season, ridding the dog of nasty little fleas and loads of garden care.  We were in the path of a massive rainy day, which I loved.  Rainy days are amazing and give the the perfect excuse for a great scary movie or novel.  Well, that did not happen this time, but I did bake some amazing sugar cookies. It is kind of depressing I missed out on my favorite activity since it was not just a tiny little rain, it was massive rain all day.  The kind you can hear from inside and just want to lay in bed and listen.

The sunflowers loved the rain as well.  They needed a little care afterward to get them back to standing up straight.  The ground was so soft a few fell over like little trees.  All of the tomato plants savored the rain and have the first tomatoes hiding under leaves.

The tiny little fish are loving the new places to hide under the grass on the edges of the pond.

We also had a few new visitors.  Finally a mated pair of ducks chose the area to raise their little ones.  They are Black-bellied Whistling Ducks which are not very common this far north.  They usually stay farther south from what I have learned. They seem happy so far, so maybe they will have a lot of little ducklings chasing them around soon.

We have a few duck nesting boxes around the pond, but these two chose to build a nest in a tree above the sunflower garden.  They get very vocal when we water the sunflowers or pull weeds. They are not too active during the day.  We see them most right before dark looking for food or coming down for a swim.  They are pretty tame.  They will come closer to us than the white ducks we have raised. We give them space to do their own thing since it would be nice to see little ducks swimming.