My daughter and I took a walk at the Brick Pond today. It was unsettled, alternating between clouds and sun, warmth and chill.

Next to the parking area at the entrance to the trail, an old willow tree has stood for years. We’ve seen oriole nests in it, warblers, and even, once, a red-tailed hawk eating a mouse.

Today we discovered it had fallen.

The tree has lived through a lot of history there, acting almost as a host ushering us into many walks, and framing every first glimpse of the pond. I’ll miss it. I hope another will be planted.

We ventured in, noting the lush vegetation and napping box turtles on logs.

I wasn’t really expecting a song sparrow to be hopping down in among the grasses, logs and pond scum, but there it was, busy about some important business.

I’m not sure what this bloom is, and my wildflower guide gives no clue.

We startled two pairs of wood ducks as we came to the berm between the main pond and a little marsh. This male let me get some pics.

Things got interesting when we saw a large snapping turtle gliding stealthily our way.

He wanted to swim through the drainage pipe under the berm, but he was watching us cautiously. Not till we walked a little way up the path and stood still behind some bushes did he make his move.

My daughter refers to this turtle as Godzilla, but as intimidating as it is, she moved to the walkway over the pipe to watch him swim through. We saw him come out the other side, fully submerged and moving a fair amount of water, as well as producing plenty of bubbles.

Once past him, we crossed a little wooded area and walked out on a second berm that spans the pond.

We saw a vole, an Eastern kingbird, yellow warblers, a Baltimore oriole, a kingfisher, a green heron, and some red-winged blackbirds. At that point, we turned back. Our friend the snapper was where we’d left it, lounging in the sunnier, marshier water.

Still observant.

Some water snakes had appeared, racing around the edges of the water.

It was a lovely and interesting way to wile away more time than we intended. But it’s a renewing experience to be out there.

The more you look, the more you see.

Visiting the local pond, we were greeted by this affable green frog.

He looks like he’s wearing a medal. Maybe that explains the sense of security he radiated.

We noted a whole crew of young wood ducks, grown by leaps and bounds since we last saw them. They whistled quietly to each other as they sailed by.

Naturally, we saw — and were observed by — some wary green herons. Such a combination of vivid beauty and drollery! Everything about them seems exaggerated somehow, from the shape and coloration of head and beak, to the expressive eyes, to the stubby tails, to the harsh cries. They always make me smile.

I absolutely love them.

A couple of green herons posed for my daughters and I on our second Brick Pond visit. They’re so beautifully colored, yet also inherently comical with their brash call, short tail, and eager dash from one end of a log to the other.

I brought my Panasonic Lumix this time, a bridge camera instead of the heavier mirrorless Canon RP, to refresh my memory of its zoom. The resolution isn’t as sharp as I’d like, and I was reminded that it takes longer for the zoom lens to extend automatically than it does to zoom in with the Canon’s telephoto. But the zoom does take you in closer, so the object you want to photograph fills the viewfinder.

Camera comparisons aside, we reached the pond at midday on a mostly sunny day, though it was dimmed somewhat by the Canada wildfire smoke lingering in our area. Along with the herons, we saw some box turtles sunning themselves, as well as two giant snappers doing the same atop the beaver lodge across the pond. The other night we saw some beavers, but that was at dusk. No sign of them today.

Another giant snapper was impersonating a lily pad near the path back, and when we reached the parking area some men building a new observation deck showed us some snapper eggs they’d come upon earlier in the day. That was certainly a bonus!

All in all we left reminded of lives going on all around us, lives that don’t depend on us and make up a complex web of relationships in the pond. They’re about their business whether we take the time to look or not, but we were glad to get a glimpse of it.

It’s been the rainiest spring I can remember, and it felt good to get out yesterday and today to visit a favorite local wetland. I wasn’t prepared for photos, so most of these were taken via my phone.

My daughter and I took our walk in the early afternoon, and we enjoyed so many sights and reminders of natural wonders that we returned in the evening with my husband and other daughter.

It may sound strange, but the “jackpot” sighting for me was a tree frog! I’ve heard them many times but never seen one. As we were heading back in the evening, the frogs were holding forth, and I just managed to sneak up on one and actually get a glimpse of one of these amazing croakers.

This album captures some of the sights. My daughters and I actually found ourselves back there today, but those pics will be for another post.

I never followed up my heron post with the other pictures from my Sapsucker Woods walk. Here they are — a reminder that we always see new sights. Several of these plants are unfamiliar to me, and I need to follow up on them.

I’d also like to learn more about frogs. Years ago I took a picture of one sitting atop the ice on a frozen marsh in winter. On this walk, I saw this handsome fellow with his bubbly smile. I wonder: why the bubbles?

Anna Botsford Comstock is no help in this, but I do learn from her Handbook of Nature Study that:

• Their ears are the round gray spots next to their eyes. They’re visible on the frog in the picture.
• Frogs hibernate, burrowed into the mud of ponds. What made the one on ice appear in January remains a mystery. Reading the rest of that post makes me think it was an unseasonably warm spell, because the birds also were behaving as if it was spring. The frog may have been doing the same thing.
• They are a favorite food of herons. This I knew already.
• They can cover ground much more quickly than toads due to their muscular, developed hind legs, but water is their home environment.
• Frogs have a chameleon power to change to the color of their surroundings. This reminded me of one that I found on my kitchen counter shortly after my husband and I moved in. At that time the counter was dark green — in keeping with the original ’70s vintage of the kitchen! — and the frog sat motionless on it, identical in color, next to the sink. I was sure it was a prank, a plastic frog placed there by my husband, but in fact it was a real frog. I have no idea how it got there, other than perhaps it came through the drain. It’s the one and only indoor frog I’ve ever seen. I moved it out to the front step and later in the day it was still there but had changed to gray.

So much for my brief investigation of Comstock’s comments on frogs. Now on to the pictures.