Australian black duck ducklings
Some days you just have to escape at lunchtime and get away. Normal lunch breaks are far too frequently spent at my desk, or not very far away. The better lunch breaks are spent sitting under a tree on the lawns, or walking around the grounds of Monash or the streets nearby. Today was one of the better ones — no wind, warm sun, get away from the screens and the hum and walk down to the pond under the trees at the north-east corner of campus. I nearly lost count of the number of birds around me; magpies, mudlarks, Noisy miners, a butcherbird and a White-faced heron, a pair of Little grebes diving in the dam, a pair of ravens stalking around in the bushes, and half a dozen Black ducks paddling about, one with half a dozen ducklings.
With so little rainfall the water level is falling, but what remains is very clear. I lost myself for ten minutes or so watching at the ducklings chase each other around in the shallows.
