Quacking, waddling, aquatic bird quite possibly duck

Talleyville, Delaware, 1:21 p.m., 10/10/2019

Rubbing his jaw and narrowing his eyes, a local man was hesitant to give an exact name to the feathered, billed animal he was watching paddle across the pond in Vilone Park earlier today. “It’s tricky to make these kinds of calls,” said systems analyst/amateur bird watcher Dennis Adelaide as he observed the creature dip its head underwater and wag its orange, webbed feet in the air. “Your instinct is to say, sure, it’s a duck, but it could also be a goose or an eagle or even a toucan. If you’re wrong about that, it can get ugly.” Adelaide pointed out a time five years ago when he spent a full hour photographing a great horned owl resting on a car dealership’s roof only to find out later it was a decoy. Another time, he accidentally mistook an empty beer can for the first robin of spring. But, he added, those mistakes have only made him more cautious in the way he identifies things. “It’s like they say,” Adelaide said. “If it talks like a racist, tweets like a racist, makes racist policies and doesn’t try to distance itself from other racists, it’s probably racist. You can’t mess that up — everybody knows that.” This is a developing story.