Aspen Ridge/Hill Place detention pond attracts mallards that nest at Baum Stadium detention pond in summer

Please click on images to enlarge. These photos were taken on the old Aspen Ridge site on Monday, March 10, 2008, while on a walk with the new design team for the area, which is to be called Hill Place. The Aspen Ridge developers removed the mobilehome park, all the trees and all the absorbent topsoil from the area in 2003, 2004, and mostly in 2005. They abandoned the site in summer 2006 and left it covered with rocky, yellow soil used to fill the wetland and a bunch of filled areas raised above the former elevation of the seep-spring hillside and native prairie/Savanna. Additionally, several stormwater-detention ponds and dredged out areas for streets were left with stormwater drains unfinished.
Nature starts restoring land as soon as it is destroyed. The presence of the mallards in March 2008 and the late-blooming asters that nourished the southwest-migrating monarch butterflies in October 2007 are a tribute to the adaptability of wild things to decreases in native habitat and their will to survive.
The top photo isn't a prize-winner; but, by clicking to enlarge it, one may see a pair of mallards flying from Baum Stadium's detention pond to a large detention pond on Aspen Ridge/Hill Place.

The subsequent photos show the mallards on the water. This pair will be found nesting on the pond south of the Razorback baseball field later in spring and summer as they did in 2007. Photos from months ago — and way down the archives of this Web log — show them with their young as the nestlings became mobile ducklings and finally fully fledged ducks capable of going out into the country side and possibly joining a migrating flock of their kind. The pair of mallards persist in their effort to repopulate the area with their kind!