Windows 7: recent places on desktop

today I realised that I had a recent places icon on my desktop. I tried right clicking it to delete but there's no option to do so. I'm a bit anal about what's on my desktop so I would love some help in removing it

Question, do you still see "recent places" in the windows explorer under "favorites"?

If you do still see it there, it could be that at some point you tried to manually clear the recent places history by clicking into it and deleting the entries. Doing this can sometimes cause the desktop recycle bin icon to change to the name+icon of recent places. To resolve that, right click the desktop, choose personalize, then change desktop icons and un-tick "recycle bin", click OK. Then click change desktop icons once again and put a tick back in recycle bin and click OK. Recent places will be gone from the desktop and the recycle bin will be back.

If you do not see recent places in the windows explorer window, drag it back under the "favorites" area and you should be able to remove the duplicate after doing this.