Bufflehead Duck

With all of the lakes, rivers and other wet lands that we have around we see quite a few ducks her in the part of the world which I live in. This is especially true during the spring and fall migrations when some of the ducks that we do not usually see stop over to rest and feed. One of the more colorful ducks that we see during migration is the bufflehead.

During the spring migration I often see mated pairs of bufflehead traveling together on their way to their breeding grounds up north in Canada. During the fall migration usually males and females travel separately on their way to the southern US and Mexico. The top pic, the female, was taken at Crex Meadows in October. The male, above, was photographed at Black Dog Lake in April.

Watery Wednesday: Crex Waterfowl

As the spring progresses many of the waterfowl have already begun to return to the north country. So far besides mallards and Canadian geese, which stay in the area all winter long, I have also seen many types of ducks return.

Many of these birds that I photographed at Crex Meadows, on one of my last trips there last October, have probably already returned to the area. I have already spotted bufflehead ducks, like the female pictured above, on the ponds near Black Dog Lake.

I have also seen American coot around Black Dog Lake as well as Wood Lake and Whitewater State Park.

Although coots look like ducks they are actually part of the rail family. Because of this they have toed feet instead of webbed feet like ducks do.

Canvasback ducks are a bit more rare and I have not yet seen any of these so far this year.

This guy was hiding out in a migrating flock of coots.

Kingfisher, Bufflehead, Egret, Pelicans

After doing some birding at Fort Snelling State Park on April 20th I headed down the Minnesota River a bit to the Minnesota Valley NWR to see what wildlife that I could find.
At the marsh across from Black Dog Lake, which technically is still part of Fort Snelling, I found the female belted kingfisher that I have photographed on a few occasions lately. She was perched on her favorite snag but she did not stay very long this time.
In one of the small ponds near Black Dog I found a pair of bufflehead ducks.
Across the river a the old Cedar Avenue Bridge I found an egret who was pretty intent on its fishing.
There was not a lot to photograph from the boardwalk at Old Cedar Ave. Quite a few ducks and geese around but most were not with in good photographic range. As I was leaving, to head over to Wood Lake Nature Center to check things out there, a kettle of white pelicans flew over, following the river north.

Black Dog Merganser

I had hoped to blog from the Sax Zim Birding Festival that I attended this weekend but unfortunately I did not have Internet access at the hotel, which I stayed at. I did take a lot of shots of some great winter birds that I will be posting about shortly. I need to get them all down loaded first so while you wait here is a picture that I took at Black Dog Lake back on the 9th.
It was very cold and pretty quiet that Saturday I did find a common merganser female in the icy water.
Last year when we were in California we found a red-breasted merganser in the much warmer waters of the Elkhorn Slough. Red-breasted mergansers typically migrate to costal water, like those in California, during the winter.
We also found a female bufflehead in the harbor at Moss Landing. I have photographed bufflehead in Ca, Two Harbors, MN and the Bosque Del Apache in New Mexico.
When we on our whale watch looking for gray whales, I have already photographed humpbacks and orcas, we came across this common murre.
The common murre is a bird that we do not see in Minnesota. It spends most of its life in the sea and usually leaves the water only to breed on islands or rocky shorelines.

The last stop in my Duluth adventure

My last stop on my Duluth tour, on Thursday, was Two Harbors. By the time I arrived it was after 4:00pm so I did not have much time. It would be dark soon and I still had to drive for about 3 hours to get home. In the harbor I spotted two ducks. The first one was a bufflehead.
Buffleheads are very colorful when the light hits them just right. The only buffleheads that I have photographed in the past were a pair at the Bosque del Apache last winter, so it was kind of cool to see one in northern Minnesota.
The other duck in the harbor was a scaup. I think that it was a greater scaup because it was much larger then the bufflehead and it had a very thick beak.
On the shore a pair of snow bunting were foraging in the grass.

Then I decided to take a few minutes to check out the woods by the light house. I saw a few dark-eyed juncos, white tailed dear, and a downy woodpecker, who appeared to be molting or at least he had a few feathers out of place.I wish I would have had more time to check out the north shore but the sun was setting so I knew that I would have to plan another trip if I wanted to do more north shore birding. So I packed up my equipment, stopped for gas on the way out of town and began the trip home.