Ruddy Duck and Northern Shoveler from Palo Alto

Ruddy Duck

Northern Shoveler

Back in Jersey: Lake Nelson Birds

Belted Kingfisher


Hooded Mergansers


Cormorant

Ruddy Duck

 

Red Throated Loon

We're back home in New Jersey. Lake Nelson had a few visitors today who are very infrequent: A lone ruddy duck and a lone red-throated loon. Four hooded mergansers arrived. The wind may have blown them off course. Of course, the resident cormorants are still active and the kingfisher also is out.

Reflecting on the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach

Pacific Loon

Western Grebe

Male Bufflehead

Female Bufflehead

 

Widgeons

Lesser Scaup

Ruddy Duck

Brigantine: Ducks

Northern Pintails

American Black Duck

Hooded Merganser

Ruddy Ducks

Many migrating ducks are returning to Brigantine. There were at least 100 pintails around, but just one hooded merganser.

Meadowlands birds

Egret

Downy Woodpecker

Juvenile Mute Swan

Ruddy Duck Family

We went to the NJMC Environmental Center in Lyndhurst, NJ on Sunday AM. We are a little early for many of the migrating birds, but we did take a few photos. The highlight was the baby ruddy ducks. It's not a great photo, but they are very small and stayed by the small island away from people. They were so cute diving underwater.

The juvenile mute swan is showing off its foot. We have a bit of a debate whether this is a deformity because the foot seems too high on the back and it didn't ever seem to put it in the water.

Ruddy Ducks sleeping at Swimming River Reservoir

 

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.

Ruddy Ducks

Ruddy Ducks at Bolsa Chica

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.

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.