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| Ruddy Duck |
There are now quite a few red-winged blackbirds around claiming their territory and letting everyone know it.
I found a pair of blue-winged teal in the marsh that is near the entrance.
There where three red-breasted mergansers, 2 male and 1 female, on the one pond that is open.
There was also a pair of male ruddy ducks on the open pond. The second pond was still mostly frozen and it is currently still fenced off because of the construction that the city had to do with the holding pond that is right before the Cedar Bridge. The construction was supposed to be done on March 15 but tomorrow will be April 15th and yesterday when I visited it looked like they still had quite a bit of work to do.
I came down from Cedar Avenue and as I passed the marsh, which is a part of Fort Snelling State Park, I saw my first great egret of the year. As I stopped the car to get some better pics he flushed and flew further back into the marsh but I was able to get a couple of shots as he flew by.
There still quite a few American coots around. I like coots because although they look and act like ducks they are really rails so instaed of webbed feet they have long lobed toes like the rails do. I thought that this picture was unique because the bird seemed to be caught on some vegitation or something. the other cool thing about this shot is the eye. Doesn't it look like he has a red M&M for an eye? I guess that I have never quite seen a coots eye at that angle before.
The small flock of ruddy ducks that has been hanging out at Black Dog was still there. this was very cool since I do not remember seeing many of these around last year at this time.
It is the beginning of the ruddy duck breeding season. Some of the males are already in their breeding plumage, see the first ruddy duck photo, while others, like the one above are still in the process of changing. You can see that the ruddy or rust colored breeding plumage is replaceing the gray plumage that the ruddies have during the non-breeding season. The bill is still pretty gray but looks like it is starting to lighten up. The ruddy duck is one of only two, the cinnamon teal being the other, that breed in both North and South America.
Ruddy ducks are more of a western duck and are not very common in the eastern part of the US. The same is true for the state of Minnesota. Ruddy ducks are much more common in the western part of the state.
I have taken some good pics of ruddy ducks out in Montana but these were the best ones that I have been able to get in Minnesota. This past weekend I visited the park at the Coon Rapids Damn in the northern part of the Twin Cities. While there I saw another group of ruddy ducks, but they were further away and much more difficult to shoot the way that they usually are for me in Minnesota.
Medicine Lake is a pretty flat refuge with only a few slight rolling hills and even fewer trees. The two areas that have any trees to speak of are the area around the headquarters and the picnic area where the only bathroom, outhouse style, is located. The Picnic area is where we spotted the great horned owls and their nest. The majority of the park is Medicine Lake and the adjacent smaller lakes which are managed through a series of damns and dikes. We found a lot of waterfowl and waders on the small lakes and potholes.
We saw a few american avocet wading through the shallows, their heads were rusty red with the breeding plumage.
Mixed in with the avocets we saw a couple of marbled godwit.
There were quite a few Killdeer both on the shore of the lake and scouring the dirt roads.
The Wilson's Phalarope were also in breeding plumage. They swam, mostly in pairs, in tight circles close to the shore of the smaller lakes.
The eared grebe where in breading plumage and were magnificent. There were quite a few of them around.
About 10 of them swam under a small bridge that we were parked on giving us perfect views and marvelous pictures.
There was also a pair of western grebe near the highway on Medicine Lake.
We also got some good shots of several types of ducks. 
northern pintails
northern shoveler
and blue-winged teal.
After a day full of clouds on Friday as we drove across Montana, the weather on Saturday was perfect. The great weather, the owls, the eared grebes, and all the great shots that we got helped to make up for some of the things that we missed, and the bad weather that we had in Yellowstone. We also saw a few prairie birds in the fields surrounding the lake but I will include them in my next Medicine Lake post.
