Thank you for taking me on a walk and letting me see some of an area that I will probably never be able to visit in person. The bird looked similar to a mockingbird here but we don't have any exact matches where I live. A large river (The Tennessee River) and major waterway runs through my city and there are great hydroelectric dams all along it which form several huge reservoir lakes of water. The city is probably small compared to the one in your photos but I like smaller cities and would be uncomfortable in a large city. Where I grew up was an area more like where you saw the cottages, I was 12 miles from the nearest town and the land was dotted with small farms.