Two male redheads, Aythya americana, with their mates, cruise the waters of Ashbridges Bay Wednesday.
Wild about the City has been on hiatus for two months, attempting to straighten out major computer snafus. We might be sorted out . . . don’t want to push our luck too hard, but hoping for the best. So, with apologies for the long absence between posts, herewith an attempt at an update.
And an exciting one, too, for the avid duck watchers in our midst.
Down at the bay, (Ashbridge’s, that is) huge rafts of ducks have been present for the past several weeks. We have been blessed with a wonderful assortment: hundreds of our usual homebody mallards (still wonderful, for all their commonplaceness); scores of gadwalls, long-tails, buffies, goldies and scaups.
Lately, male American mergansers have been adding their elegance to the mix. The female mergansers stay in our bay in huge numbers all winter. But sometimes it’s hard to see even one of their mates. Not now, though. There are dozens of males gliding about silently, looking like sleek waiters wearing fiery orange bowties. The male mergansers stay annoyingly far out in the bay, way too far for even my longest lens to reach properly. So, until I can convince one of them to venture closer to shore, I am male merganserless — in the picture department.
But yesterday, a kind fellow birder approached me on the path out by the peanut and asked if I had seen the canvasbacks. . . Canvasbacks? I asked, quite dumbfounded. I had not seen a one all winter. I got out my binoculars to scan the raft of ducks more closely — and there were, indeed, two pairs of ducks that I hadn’t realized were there. But they weren’t canvasbacks (Aythya valisineria). They were redheads. Close cousins. Same genus, in fact — Aythya americana. With their huge red heads, yellow eyes and blue-and-black scaup-like bills, completely unmistakeable for anything else.
Hope you enjoy seeing the handsome redheads above.
See you on the trail!
© WATC 2011
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