Pouring rain when I got to the river this morning, the remains of last night's impressive thunderstorm. The grass behind my usual bench was occupied by a flock of starlings and a pair of mallards, all busy slurping up worms. Tough being a worm; you crawl up out of the ground so you don't drown, and some pointy beak or flapping flat bill gobbles you down. After awhile the mallards must have figured they'd eaten that stretch out of house and worm, so they lifted off and circled around to the next lawn north, swooping in behind a bush. Ten seconds later, here they came bursting out again, and now there were three of them. Did they drop over there to collect a buddy, I wondered, or were they being chased off by a duck who thought that was HIS breakfast table, thank you very much? I strolled up there and found out it was the latter, because a female mallard just stood there on the lawn, looking around until he returned. Which he did pretty fast, having chased the other pair down the river. He wiggled his tail feathers, his girlfriend wiggled HER tail feathers, and they resumed shoveling up worms, which were still plentiful on THEIR lawn.