I'd like to call back summertime ...

... and have her stay for just another month or so

Duck eating a Fish

Duck eating a FishWe live on a small lake and have watched a mother mallard raise a family of five ducklings this summer. Today, one of the ducklings brought a fish into the yard and tried to eat it. Who knew that ducks ate fish?

Summer Ducklings

Lake Nelson's eleven baby ducks are almost the size of their mother now. We were surprised one evening to see another mother with eight tiny baby ducks. She isn't as attentive a mother and some of the ducklings were at the top of the dam and others at the bottom.  However, we were happy to see the family reunited the next day.

Sitting Ducks

 

 

The babies are getting big and imitating their mother.

Baby Duck Wars

 

 

There are two duck families with a total of 11 baby ducks that have been hanging out in our yard-- affectionately known as the teens and the littles. It's getting hard to distinguish the teens from their mother. The littles are getting bigger too. We've been feeding the littles cracked corn to help them grow fast enough to migrate this fall.

While they used to get along, recently they have been having a turf war. The mother of the littles chases the other family and the babies join in too. It's hard to capture the action in a photo, so there's a video at the bottom that shows one chase.

More Baby Ducks for Marian

 

 

 

 

Marian said to keep the baby duck photos coming. The last is of a duckling leaving. I hope she likes it too.

Summer Ducklings

We feel very honored when the mother ducks bring the babies up into the yard. Looks like they will be quite helpful with the clean up task under the bird feeder. Today there were actually two groups of mothers with babies in the yard, these little guys and a slightly older group. They kept their distance and shared nicely the whole time with the older group mostly napping and these young ones filling up.

Female Ruddy Duck looking for some friends

We haven't been posting much recently. We were busy with our older daughter visiting us from California. The lake was frozen which cut down on the number of waterfowl we see. It's been gray and cloudy. Chris' heart grew two sizes and she put up two Christmas trees.

Anyway, Chris spotted a small duck two days back. At first, we thought it was a grebe, but when we got the binoculars, we saw it was a lone female ruddy duck. She was trying to hang out with other ducks but the mallards, ring-necked ducks, and Canade Geese snubbed her. At least our daughter got to see some of the fancy ducks, even if some were not on their best behavior.

Red-Breasted Mergansers

 

 

We saw a few red-breasted mergansers at Bolsa Chica. There were many more females (top) than males. The red-breasted mergansers are about the same size as the common mergansers and much larger than the hooded mergansers.

American Widgeon

 

 

 

American Widgeons from Bolsa Chica.

Cinnamon Teals at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

 

 

Here are some photos of Cinnamon Teals.

Northern Pintails

We finally made it to the Meadowlands to see some migratory ducks. It was a pretty good day with a wide variety of ducks. We had never seen the pintails or the shovelers before. Here are the best photos of the northern pintails.

Northern Shovelers

Chris has always wanted to see a Northern Shoveler, or at least since we bought a book on the birds of the east coast last year. Today was our lucky day, there were several Northern Shovelers at the Richard W. DeKorte Park at the Meadowlands. The large bill of the shoveler must have been the inspiration for Daffy Duck.

Buffleheads at the Meadowlands

 

 

While we have observed an occasional bufflehead on Lake Nelson, we had never seen large groups or females before. They were a real treat at the Meadowlands.

Ruddy Ducks at The Meadowlands

 

 

There are several bird blinds set up at the Meadowlands Environmental Center. At one, we saw about 100 ruddy ducks. We were quite amused to see all of them dive under water at once several times.

Green-winged Teal

 

American Black Duck

 

A Bufflehead arrived!!!

Maybe this little bufflehead heard that we were disappointed at not seeing any of his kind at Sandy Hook over the weekend. It sure was nice of him to drop by to cheer us up. Here's what happened this morning. Chris was downstairs and sounded the alarm when she spotted him. Mike rushed down and we both went out on our dock to see him and photograph him. He swam down to the dam, so we decided to take a walk to get closer to him down there. Of course, in the few minutes it took us to get there we lost him. When we came back home, we didn't see him again either, but Chris did see two American Widgeons. Mike was inside and did not see her frantically waving her arms for him to come out with the camera, so we have no pictures of them. Eventually Mike got on his way to work, and Chris had a little more time before she had to leave. The little guy came back and the sun was better by then, so she was able to get some that really show all his great coloring around his head. He was even here later in the day for a little while when she got back from work. We like the comparison of the pictures for two reason. It shows the distinct size difference between him and the geese and also the difference the lighting can make.

Female Ruddy Duck

What's half the size of a mallard and really cute? A ruddy duck. What a sweet little surprise she was to us since we had not seen one of these last fall after we moved in. We had been out on the boat in the afternoon and went down under the bridge. We saw the usual suspects, egret and kingfisher, geese and mallards, but no "special" ducks. When we got back home, we decided we deserved a dip in the Jacuzzi, and that's when we spotted her. We were back to our crazy antics of scurrying about while dripping wet to locate the necessary equipment; binoculars and camera. If it's getting to be "fancy" duck season, we'll have to take our daughter's original advice and keep everything charged up and right by the door.

Ducks

We skimmed our bird books and can't really identify these.