Why is there suddenly a Favorites folder icon on my Mac desktop and how do I get rid of it?

This thing suddenly appeared. It’s a good guess that some accidental hand movement generated it, I don’t know. But I don’t want ANY icons on my desktop. I have a Favorites section on my Finder sidebar and that’s fine.

How do I get rid of this thing? I have a right-click “Move to Trash” menu item available, but it sure seems like a bad idea to tell my computer to throw away all my most important things.

P.S. On further investigation its only contents seem to be a few dozen photographs…?