Mary Ellen says it looked like she caught a wood duck in mid-sneeze the other day on the Jamaica Plain side of Leverett Pond.

PRI interviews a Finnish landscape architect about everything that's wrong with the Emerald Necklace.

Ed. note: Interesting article, but it sounds like she doesn't know anything about the Muddy River reclamation project and didn't spend any time south of Rte. 9.

State Police and the Boston Fire Department report the death of a man spotted falling into the river at Charlesgate around 6 p.m. State Police report: Read more:

A DCR worker discovered a man's body in the Muddy River in the area of the Bowker overpass around 10 a.m. today, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

A tentative identification has been made based on a missing-person's report, the DA's office says, adding foul play does not appear to have been involved.

It's the same general location where bodies were found in June and March.

On Friday, Ed Hatfield photographed the Muddy River under the Bowker Overpass at Charlesgate:

That basketball has been there for at least 5 years, the soccer ball about eight and I think the baseball was a Babe Ruth homerun knocked out of Fenway Park. This is part of the reason the Charles River is getting cleaner. I think every thing that ends up in the water from JP down stream ends up here and it is blocked so it doesn't go into the Charles River basin.

Yesterday, for the second time in three months, a body was recovered from the Muddy River, just upstream from this location.

Photo copyright Ed Hatfield. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Shortly after 11:30 a.m. just upstream from where Boylston Street crosses it. Homicide detectives are investigating, as they do with all unexplained deaths.

For the second time in less than a week, the Fens behind the Boston Fire Department fire-alarm center caught fire, shortly after 7:15 p.m. today. As with the last fire, firefighters made quick work of the flaming reeds, although unlike last time, firefighters didn't find somebody floating in the water past the reeds. However, the department did call in its arson investigators to help figure out what caused the fire.

Fire closer up. Photo by Masstreehugger.

Meanwhile, BFD spokesman Steve MacDonald reports the man pulled out of the water after the Saturday fire has died. Both the cause of his death and the fire remain under investigation.

Masstreehugger took this video: "From my window looking west toward the Muddy River/Back Bay Fens Victory Gardens. The fire here is burning past the Fire Dept Communications Hdqrtrs parking lot, the wind blowing it down stream toward Boylston St."

What turned out to be a two-alarm fire on both sides of the Muddy River was reported around 3 p.m., the Boston Fire Department reports.

Smoke from the fire, which rapidly jumped from brush to trees, could be seen as far away as Hingham.

Firefighters say the Fens is one of three areas in Boston primed for brush fires following our snowless winter. The area along the Neponset had a brush fire last month; Stony Brook Reservation on the Hyde Park/Roslindale line has yet to have one.

Fenway fire from Hingham. Photo by Michael Page.

Photo by BFD.

A Brookline cab driver who lost control exiting Storrow Drive at Park Drive wound up in the Muddy River this morning, the Boston Fire Department reports.

The cabbie got himself out of his vehicle OK; a tow truck and a hazmat crew responded to remove the cab and clean up anything it might have left behind.