If you're looking for a place close to home to observe wildlife, you could do a lot worse than checking out your local storm water pond. Ducks, geese, songbirds, turtles and frogs are residents at many stormwater ponds and you can also observe a variety of plants. There are two ponds near Teston Village PS. Tierra Pond is on Mast Rd. at Tierra Ave and Mast Pond is between Mast Rd. and Treasure Rd. just south of Del Francesco Way.
Early mornings are a great time to visit. The pictures above were taken at two storm water ponds near my home at about 6:00 am. The nice thing about visiting this early is that there isn't much traffic noise (hopefully) and the birds and frogs are quite vocal. If I've done my work properly, there should be an audio player below that will let you listen to a couple minutes of audio recordings below.
As always, when around water, children should be closely supervised. Many stormwater ponds are posted with warnings not to swim or skate on them because water levels can change rapidly. While the plants in and around stormwater ponds help improve the water quality, it's definitely not appropriate for swimming in or drinking as there may be high bacteria levels.
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| Blue heron in morning mist. |
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| Blue heron taking off (I guess it didn't like me running by). |
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| Red winged black bird (loudest calls in the audio recording above). |
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