With leaves now fallen, Yates Mill Pond woods landscape exposes a stark vista

It wasn't until recently that I learned that there are as many as 60 species of heron in the Wild Kingdom. So while doing my 2-mile walk Friday at Yates Mill Pond Park, I was excited to see that a heron was in photo-range distance for my iPhone while it slowly walked in high steps in the pond near the main pedestrian bridge.

If I had brought my DSLR camera (Canon 6D), I'm certain I would have been able to get a much clearer and sharper picture than the ones I got with my iPhone 13 Pro (see lead-off photo). A little farther away from the heron and the bridge were the set of water fowl shown in the photo below. Notice the small group of ducks in the distance from the fowl in the foreground and, in the extreme top of the image, a solitary duck that appears to be swimming toward the others. 

These two photos were the highlight Friday of my photo shoot, and they came near the end of my walk. I didn’t pull out my phone to start taking any pictures until the last half-mile or so of the trail course while still in the woods west of the pond.

I started taking pictures to document the stark vistas I had been admiring in light of how almost all the leaves on the deciduous trees had fallen or blown away. But also, the fact that there were no longer leaves on branches to admire made scores of fallen (or snapped) tree trunks and branches stand out unlike anything I had experienced there previously. 

The first 10 photos below illustrate (I hope) what I was describing in the paragraph above. Below those are some simple landscape photos, including the farm on an adjoining property, which I’ve photographed and presented here before. There are also shots of the trail and a particularly favorite gnarly tree I always come across while walking this trail. 

I finish with some pond reflection images, including a couple featuring the pedestrian bridge and a modest covered area at the bridge’s midsection.