Testing the water (Euphagus cyanocephalus)

Not that he was planning on taking a swim, but maybe a quick bath in the shallows ...?

Rohnert Park is hardly a birding hot spot. It's a massive "planned community" built on one immense farm that two bachelor brother farmers sold to a developer back in the late 1950's. The development tapped into the aquifer to supply this new city with water, and as a result we who had farms just uphill from there had to dig our wells deeper over the next few years. The development's parks are mostly overly groomed and not all that interesting to birds. One exception is this pond squeezed between two highways. It's got some dense shrubberies along the back side. Not the most exciting birds, but I stopped for about 15 minutes on my way to the HS reunion dinner and picked up a few ticks for my trip list and some nice shots of birds I'd seen before.