Timiskaming Birds Forum

 Hi Mark. Good to hear from you. I haven't been birding as much as I would like to, but I did manage to go out a few times, and even when I am not birding, I take the camera with me just in case. Here are some pictures.

My cormorant

A Spotted Sandpiper yesterday at Hills Lake

A Bluebird stretching its wing, as well as my camera's range.

A Wilson's Snipe at the Marsh

And 2 pictures of a Black Tern

I also took the liberty of downloading and blowing up your duck, in case it helps the ID, but somehow, it didn't work out as I thought it would...

Serge:

I also took the liberty of downloading and blowing up your duck, in case it helps the ID, but somehow, it didn't work out as I thought it would...

 

Nice photos Serge. And the blowup of Mark's duck helps.  What I was interpreting as a light patch is just a sunlit spot on the face, and the bill is too large for a Long-tailed Duck.  Besides, Long-tailed Ducks do not normally breed around these here parts. Head shape is not right for a Ring-necked Duck. I'm going to go with female Lesser Scaup, based on head shape and eye colour. Ring-necked Duck females have a dark eye, whereas Lesser Scaup females have a light coloured eye. The light eye in this photo may just be specular reflections, but I still think Lesser Scaup is a better fit.

My eyes are dark brown and on some pictures, they come out red!

I think the kind of light we have here is pretty tricky.  A lesser scaup should be dark brown with a pure white spot close to the bill and this is not what I see here.

Also, does anybody has breeding evidence for lesser scaup around there for the past 5 years?  If it's a lesser, that would be the first confirmed ever in the area.  It doesn't mean it's not a lesser.  It just shows how important is that observation for the knowledge of the area's birds.  We need somebody there tomorrow morning to confirm!

The head shape of a female ring-necked is not as evident as it is for the male.

Well, if nothing else, I seem to have gotten people talking again... in some ways it's gratifying to know that I'm not the only one having difficulties with this bird.  She was swimming in the channel that runs along the east side of the drained cell (3?), south from the north entrance.  It was one of the ducklings that first caught my eye, as I was checking out the Yellow Warbler on the far side of the channel.  I may try to sneak in for a couple minutes this morning, but I'm on my way to Ottawa with an impatient passenger.

If it helps, I've cropped and resized the picture on Flickr...

I have other pictures as well, but the light was harsh, and she knew I was there, and was trying to keep her babies safe from me... I actually had to run down the opposite side of the berm, out of sight, to get this shot, and didn't want to distress her too much by trying to get closer.