One afternoon last week, I heard the unmistakable sound of a duck quacking. We get seagulls, owls, hawks, pigeons, ravens and sometimes, a heron going after the fish in a neighbor’s pond. And large numbers of songbirds, but never ducks.

Saturday, we spotted a female mallard in the middle of the road. Later, it moved to a cozy spot on a lawn, where it appeared to be settling down for the night. We debated whether it was a pet. Since this particular neighbor is the obsessively spotless one who goes after single ants with an industrial-weight pesticide sprayer, we decided not. Given the excretory habits of the average duck.

What should I see this morning but a pair of mallards flying by in what I generally think of as raven airspace.

As I recall, there is some connection between the presence of ducks and a gnome population. Stay tuned.