On my way to work this morning I noticed a drake Bufflehead in a runoff pond right by my work. Now I'm still looking to score this species for the yard proper so I couldn't believe there's one sitting on a sick joke of a pond not 3/4s of a mile from the wetlands that actually have good habitat at my place! (See screen shot on left) So of course I get out there as soon as I get off work and I see a pair of Common Mergs cruising around the half open pond. About 50 odd gulls were feeding on dead fish on the ice (~50/50 split ringers and HERGs). I set my scope up and spent about an hour watching for waterfowl. I came up with only three species of waterfowl (CANG and MALL being the obvious two) but did score 5 different flyover occurrences of COME (2,1,1,5,1). How I missed that species last spring, I don't know...
Cruising warily (above) then blasting off (below)
New male drops in 15 minutes later
Lots of good looking habitat around for dabs and shorebirds, nothing but these boys thus far though...
The only other bird of note was a young Sharp-shinned Hawk (year bird #33) that flew through scaring up the RWBL that are set up all around the marsh.
Crazy that the bird was in such a tiny impoundment rather than your larger deeper pond! And like my George Carlin post from last year, isn't this a "near hit" rather than a "near miss"?
ReplyDeletehttp://theyardbirds09.blogspot.com/2010/11/near-hit.html
Not much change out there today. 6 Common Mergs on the water when I went out, but I also tacked on a pair of Hooded Mergs on the far side of the pond working the barely open edges adjacent 60% or so remaining ice.
ReplyDeleteGod Fitzy....
ReplyDeletesend me some duckage STAT!