Unusual visitors to our pond

A few years ago a pair of mallards visited our pond briefly, but we hadn't seen any since then ... until tonight. Our pond is just barely ten feet across, so I don't believe it's adequate to support a pair of ducks, but it's interesting to have them as visitors.

Our biggest concern about having these otherwise welcome guests is that they'll eat our toad tadpoles. We've had batches of toad eggs in both our upper pond (the one shown here) and in our lower pond, which is next to the house. The toads laid many thousands of eggs, so as long as they don't go into our bottom wildlife pond, then we'll probably have as many tadpoles as our yard can support anyway.

It was interesting watching the two enjoying the pond and stream. As I kept crawling closer, they seemed to become quite comfortable with my presence, but seldom took their eyes off me just in case.

They finally left the pond and stream and wandered into my meadow garden for a little while before taking off.