Ring-Necked Duck

The ringed-neck duck is one of the birds that reminds me that many species were originally named by hunters. Looking at them I would have been more likely to call them ring-billed ducks because of the unique markings on their beaks. So why ring-necked.
Its not something that you see often out in the wild while they are swimming. Often they have their heads sort of tucked into their bodies so you can not see their necks, like in the first photo. However once in a while they stretch out their necks and then you can see the lighting band on the neck, as in the photo above. The neck ring is much more obvious when you have a dead duck laying at your feet, or so I am told. So as hunters killed these ducks they named them ring-necked because to them it was an obvious field marking.

Ringed-neck Duck

The ring-necked duck is named for the chestnut colored ring that it has around the base of its neck. Unfortunately the ring is not a very good field mark for identifying the bird, since it usually is not visible when the duck is swimming or in flight. This duck, like many birds, was named back in the days when most of the people looking at birds were hunters. Hunters looking at a dead bird in hand would easily see the collar around the birds neck and that is probably how this duck got its name. Birders looking at this bird from a distance through scope would have probably named it a ring-billed duck.

Birding Crex Meadows

After spending the long Forth of July weekend photographing the bears at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary and then spending time photographing things in the Sax Zim Bog I decided to rest a bit the following week and spend some time at home. By the next Saturday I was getting a little stir crazy so I decided to take a trip up to Crex Meadows. Crex Meadows is a great birding location and even in the summer when birding is a bit slow in this area you can usually find something to photograph in Crex.
Mourning doves are fairly common through out most of North America in one season or another, which is why I do not often stop to photograph them, but this bird was sitting beautifully in perfect light. So I stopped to take the pic. Mourning doves are considered a game bird and their are hunting seasons for them in many states. Fortunately Minnesota does not have a mourning bird season, I am not sure if Wisconsin does or not, which is good because I think that hunting mourning doves is one of the stupidest things that I have ever heard of. I am not a hunter, never have and never will, but at least with duck, pheasant, or dear you are hunting something that you can eat. After killing a mourning dove are you going to take it home and make yourself a sandwich?
Many eastern kingbirds spend their summers in the area feasting on insects. When they arrive in the spring they claim a breeding territory which they defend aggressively against other kingbirds as well as larger birds such as hawks, crows and bluejays. In the winter they migrate down to South America where they live in communities and eat mostly fruit.

The killdeer is the most common shorebird that we usually see in the area. That is because they have adapted well to people. This killdeer was searching the dirt road for worms, grasshoppers, beetles and other insects. Killdeers are great actors and will put on the show of a lifetime, pretending to have a broken wing to lure predators away from their nest.
Ring-necked ducks are named so because of the rust colored ring on their necks. Typically you do not get to see the ring, but this duck has his necked stretched so that the ring is visible. I wonder if this is the same ring-necked pair that I photographed earlier in the year at Crex that was also showing of its ring.
One of the birds that is most identified with Crex Meadows is the Sandhill Crane. Crex has a resident population of sandhills which comes each spring and stays though until fall. Last year Michelle and I were lucky enough to get to photograph a sandhill colt but this year I was not so lucky.
In the fall more sandhills will arrive at Crex from all around the upper Midwest and Canada. Hundreds of cranes will be grouped together preparing for the flight down to their winter habitat. Winters are spent in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico with small populations also in southern California and Florida. In the spring tens of thousands of cranes migrate together all stopping to rest at the Platte River in Nebraska. From there they break up into groups and move on to their summer breeding ground.
The only raptor that I photographed that day was this bald eagle who was keeping a watchful eye over the park. From what I have been told, at the National Eagle Center, Wisconsin is the state with the fourth largest population of eagles in the US, first being Alaska, then Minnesota and Florida.

Crex Waterfowl

Yellowstone is not the only place to see waterfowl. On our trip to Crex Meadows, June 1st, we spotted a few ducks that have still remained. The ducks that we saw the most of were mallards and blue-winged teal.
We also saw quite a few ring-necked ducks. The cool thing about this picture is that you can actually see the ring around the neck that the duck is named for. This is unusual. Some people say that you can tell that this bird was named by hunters because usually you do not see the ring around the neck unless you have the bird in your hand. If you want to see examples of how ring-necked ducks usually look check out this link of past ring-necked duck pictures that I have taken. Notice that the lighter colored band around the neck of the bird in this picture is not visible on those other birds.

We also did spot a couple of pied-billed grebes. Michelle thinks that pied grebes are cute, probably because their eyes are so big for their little bodies. I liked this shot because it had just come up from a dive and part of its body is still submerged.

Yellowstone Waterfowl

This year we saw a lot more waterfowl in Yellowstone then we usually do. I am guessing that the reason had something to do with the weather. Up in Yellowstone spring was way behind. There was a lot more snow on the ground then we usually see, Yellowstone Lake was pretty much still completely frozen, this is the first time that we have seen it this way in the past 8 years, and we were told that Dunraven Pass, which is scheduled to open up Memorial Day weekend each year, still had something like 24 feet of snow. Where there wasn't snow there was snow melt. Streems became rivers and many fields became lakes. It may also have had something to do with the fact that to the north of the park Montana had very low water levels. This of course is all just speculation.
The fact was that there were more water around and we took advantage by getting some good pics. I found these ring-necked ducks on Saturday as we were driving through the park on our way to go back home. Even though it was pretty cloudy and drab they still threw a nice reflection in North Twin Lake.

On Friday we went a little way up the east enterence to check for bears, a grizzly with a cub had been spotted there on Wednesday. We did not find any bear but there was a little water down in Mary's Bay on Yellowstone Lake and we found a pair of common mergansers.
We usually get common mergansers in Minnesota, in the winter, but they are not usually as cooperative. This pair was fairly close to shore and was swimming slowly giving us some nice pics.

Ring-necked Duck FotY 2008

I saw my first ring-necked ducks of 2008 at Black Dog Lake in the Minnesota Valley NWR on March 24th.
I almost missed the ring-necked because they were mixed in with a bunch of scaup, which at first glance from a ways away look similar.

The most interesting thing about ring-necked ducks is that they do have a ring or collar of chestnut colored feathers on the back of their neck, however the only way to really view the ring is by having the bird in hand. This is one of the ducks that was no doubt named by hunters who could see the ring-neck after they retrieved the bird.

Another trip to Vadnais Lake before the road closes

The road at Vadnais Lake closed for the season last week but the day before it closed I took a trip over and got some more shots of waterfowl on the lake.

There were still a few ring-necked ducks hanging around. There are not as many as there was a couple weeks ago, but on this trip they were in a lot closer to shore so I snapped a couple of pics.

There were also some redheaded ducks still around. This time around I got an opportunity to photograph a male redhead A new comer to Vadnais Lake were the canvas backs.

Canvas backs are a larger diving duck that are found only in North America. They breed from Alaska to Manitoba and south from Minnesota to California.

During the breeding season the canvasback inhabit wetland habitats. The nests are formed of grass and feathers in the marsh. They typically lay 7 to 10 eggs which the female will incubate for around 24 days.

Canvasbacks eat aquatic vegetation such as pond weed, water lilly and their favorite wild celery. They also will eat mollusks, insects, and small crustaceans and fish.

Canvas backs are highly migratory. They spend their winters on the Great Lakes, Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts and in Mexico.

Canvasbacks are currently on the decline due mostly to loss of wetland habitat in their breeding range.

Ring-necked ducks at Vadnais Lake

Another type of duck that I was shooting at Lake Vadnais was the ring-necked duck.
The ring-necked duck gets its name from the chestnut collar that they have on the back of their necks. Unfortunately this is only visible when you have the bird in hand. This duck was named in the era when most identification was done by hunters after the duck was dead.
The ring-necked duck is a diving duck meaning that it feeds by diving under water where it eats aquatic plants, snails, insects and small fish. Other diving ducks include scaups, redhead ducks, tufted ducks, canvasbacks and others.

Ring-necked ducks breed in wooded lakes or ponds in the northern United States and Canada. In the winter they migrate to the southern part of the US although some individuals have been found in western Europe as well as Central America.Since ring-necked ducks do not typically form large flocks they are not typically hunted.

Fun at Crex Meadows

Sunday we went up to Crex Meadows in Wisconsin. The weather was very nice with mostly sunny skies. Crex is about an hour to an hour and a half northeast of the Twin Cities, just across the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. This is the earliest that we have made the trip up and it was not quite as green as it was here in the Twin Cities. The water levels were good and the waterfowl had started to return. We saw a lot of canadian geese nesting.
There were also quite a few american coots, especially near the shoreline of Phantom Lake.

We also saw some blue-winged teal and a few ring-necked ducks.

The highlight of the trip were the trumpeter swans. As you can see in the pictures they have already begun to nest. We will need to come back again in June to hopefully photograph the cygnets. We saw about a dozen swans throughout Crex.

We did not see as many raptors as we have on past trips. This osprey had left it's platform and was scouring the lakes and ponds for fish. The only other raptor that we saw was a northern harrier but it was flying too fast to get a picture. In the past we have also seen kestrels, red-tails, and peregrine at Crex.

Some of the sandhill cranes have returned. In the fall, Crex is usually home to large flocks of sandhills which feed on the refuge fields. On this trip we only saw about a half dozen cranes, all of them foraging in several areas that had been control burned. All were painted up for mating season looking a lot more orange then the ones that I photographed in the Bosque del Apache earlier this year in February.
As usual the red-winged black birds were "singing in the marsh, just singing in the marsh".
On the way out we passed several bird houses on the grounds of the local airport. On the pole for each house stood a tree swallow, their metallic teal wings glinting in the bright sun.
We had a great time being outside and enjoying the weather. We plan to return in early June when we hope to see more waterfowl and trumpeter cygnets.