Wednesday, March 11, 2009

County line waterfowl spots

Spring has definitely sprung here in SE Wisconsin along the Racine and Walworth County lines. This has prompted renewed checking of my various favorite local lakes, ponds, and puddles in search of the latest migrant waterfowl and/or shorebirds that may have dropped in. Today was no exception, and I checked 11 of the highlighted locations below. Many of them yielded nothing, but most held at least something of interest.
Probably the best bird for this area was a lone Tundra Swan that I actually saw yesterday fly low over my house heading west. Today I checked the large wetland complex between STH 20 and Honey Creek Rd (labeled "Game Farm Wetlands on the above map) and out among the geese was a single swan with a black beak that I presume (bins only) was the same Tundra that buzzed my house previously.
Other things of note included Northern Pintail at 2 locations, Wood Duck at 3 locations, Hooded Merganser at 3 locations, Common Goldeneye at 2 locations, and Redhead (5), Northern Shoveler (3), Gadwall, Common Merganser (18), and Cackling Goose (2) at one location each. Last week this same loop produced Ring-necked Duck (3) and Lesser Scaup additionally.

One of my favorite parts of this season is that the ducks don't really have many places to go so with a little caution you can often get digi-bined shots of these birds without ever having to get out of the vehicle or even have a scope along. Both photos were taken today through my Vortex Razor 8x42s.

No comments: