Sitemeter

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Shorebirds!

Today started out quite lovely….

rising water at this end

had the opportunity to head out for a morning ‘dog less’ walk – the water levels are now creeping up in our boat launch area…

Mergansers and Goldeneye

Most notable this morning was a large flock of mainly Common Mergansers, but with some Common Goldeneye mixed in

Flying Common Mergansers

there had to be at least 50 birds in the group…

bottom log in the water

at the log bay, that lower log is now partially submerged…and just for interest’s sake…

log bay

here is the same area at the same time of the year, last year – so it is obvious the water is rising a lot earlier than it did last year!

Female Red-wing

back to today, still lots of female Red-wing Blackbirds

Male Rufous

a number of Rufous Hummingbirds along the trail today.

Male Goldfinch

American Goldfinch too…

Turkey Vulture

not a great picture – but one of the first Turkey Vultures seen this season..

Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs

most notable for the day though were these shorebirds that flew in and landed just across from us during our afternoon walk….

Greater and Lessers

They were being very vocal and very busy…in fact it was almost a feeding frenzy.  I’ve studied and studied these pictures and as far as I can tell there are 3 Greater Yellowlegs (the 3 bigger birds) and 2 Lesser Yellowlegs. 

Feeding Yellowlegs

I find it strange to see the two species together, but I guess during migration, anything can happen!

No comments:

Post a Comment