More about Thursday's Birding- Ducks

As I stated in my previous blog, the best thing about Thursdays birding was discovering the Little Egret.  Birding wise, we did not find a large number of birds, but, I picked up another first.  It was not a life bird, rather it was the first time that I had been able to photograph this species.  Last year, I did get the bird as a lifer, however, I did not obtain any photographs.  The bird is an Eurasian Wigeon and usually at least one spends the winter in the Mill pond located in Marston Mills, Massachusetts.  When we arrived at the pond, there were a number of different species of ducks in the water.  Initially, the Eurasian Wigeon was not present.  I was able to photograph American Wigeons, Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, Ring-necked Duck and the ubiquitous Mallards.  Suddenly, from around the corner swam the Eurasian Wigeon in all its beautiful color, the head a red-dish brown with a buffing for had its flanks and back, a pale gray and it's breast is pinkish.

Eurasian Wigeon

Eurasian Wigeon

Northern Shoveler

American Wigeon

Gadwall Pair

American Wigeon

Northern Shoveler - look at its bill and you can see how it obtained its name

Ring-neck Duck

Other species of birds that we saw at the Mill Pond were Mute Swans, A Belted Kingfisher, A Great Blue Heron, and a light morph of a Red-tailed Hawk flying overhead.

Belted Kingfisher

Great Blue Heron

Mute Swan

Red-tailed Hawk - Light Morph

Victoria British Columbia Day One

Monday, March 6, started the day meeting Glenn Bartley in the lobby of the motel where the four participants introduced themselves to each other. Then off to do photography. We went to the Lagoon to photograph mainly the ducks both swimming and in flight. Glenn taught us the best technique for flight photography. He went up and down the shore 200 plus yards to get the ducks into one area by feeding them, then went in the opposite direction and put out feed to get them to fly past us. Many good pictures were obtained and yes a lot of losers.

Common Goldeneye

Mallard

Northern Pintail

Bufflehead

Before we left a pair of mallard got into a long fight.  If you look at the picture the front mallard has blood in its eye.

In the afternoon we went to “the Golden Pond: where the reflection of the trees on the water turned the color of the water yellow. We photographed many different species of ducks, but alas the wood ducks stayed hidden.

Lesser Scaup

American Wigeon

We finished the day on Cove Point where we photographed Black turnstones, dunlins and a pair of Harlequin Ducks.

Harlequin Duck

A fine finish for a great day