Mallard drake at the Wright Stop Plaza bus hub.

[full_metal_ox]

Taken 15 May 2023, 19:13 U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time, at the Wright Stop Plaza(1) bus hub in downtown Dayton, Ohio.



This handsome gent was the last photo I took in Dayton before my departure for Florida, and I’m rather pleased with the role the strong contrasting lines of the paving stones and the bars of the metal bench play in the composition.

(Out of frame: the flock of English sparrows he was challenging for the rights to a popcorn spill. Also out of frame, except for the merest edge of her jacket to the right of my purse: the young lady conducting a live webcast on recovery and the Gospel from her smartphone.)

(1) The Wright Brothers’ names and likenesses are all over the Dayton area, from Wright Memorial Library to Wright State University to Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; these guys are our unofficial genii loci and patron saints.

Comments

[adafrog]

:)

[full_metal_ox]

Glad you like it.

[dewline]

Excellent.

[cmcmck]

Such handsome birds!

[shirebound]

That's a delightful sighting.

[full_metal_ox]

And not as big a surprise as someone unfamiliar with the region might think; the confluence of the Great Miami and Mad Rivers is a few blocks away, and downtown is a reliable source of human food waste.

(An even more outside-the-Coastal-Mass-Media-Tiny-Reference-Pool Wildlife Fun Fact about Dayton: this far from anything resembling an ocean, we have gulls. Their most frequent hangout is the river, but they’re also a sometime sight in shopping center parking lots following a heavy rain or a meltoff of accumulated snow. My theory is that the vast flat expanses of wet pavement remind them of beaches at low tide.)

[minoanmiss]

Oh he's so dapper!

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've been seeing more ducks and geese here in central Illinois too. :D

[ribirdnerd]

I love Mallard (Ducks)!