My owl friends: not just for owls

I do like to photograph other wildlife besides my owl friends, so thought I'd share what I saw today.
Today's plan was to do grocery shopping, assorted errands and clean the house.
But it was way too nice a day to spend it doing chores. So I grabbed my camera and some snacks and headed down to my favorite place to photograph. There's this lake with hiking
trails right behind the Belmar Library in Lakewood. I have gotten some of my most favorite
pics there, so had to go check it out.
I walked halfway around the big lake and then went over to check out the little pond. As I came over the rise, I looked at the pond and it was pretty quiet. Hmmmm not much going on today. Then I happened to glance to my right and there was a pair of wood ducks! They are so beautiful and I have not gotten any pics of a pair, so I was excited!
Here's what I got.......

I continued walking around the big lake. There were mostly shovelers and canada geese but then I saw a hood merganser having breakfast. I've seen other water fowl eating crayfish is this lake, so they must be plentiful!

I was having so much fun, I decided to stop by my other favorite place on the way home. Prospect park in Wheatridge has 4 lakes and a creek, so lots of waterfowl comes through here. I was hoping to see the mandarin duck but he wasn't around. So I headed to the other lakes to see what was happening.
There's a big dead tree in the middle of lake 2. There are about 15 pairs of double crested cormorants nesting in that tree. It's very fun to watch them build their nests but there's not much to photograph. Black birds flying through the air do not make good photos.
So I was just enjoying watching them and a great blue heron landed in the dead tree. Wow! He was delivering some grass to his wife for the nest they were making. I got some fun pics of the nest building....