Jarvis Sewage Lagoon: 1 Wood Duck and 10 Mallards
Townsend Sewage Lagoons: 5 Least Sandpipers, 2 Lesser Yellowlegs, Wilson's Phalarope, 3 American Wigeon, Redhead, ++ breeding Northern Shovellers and tiny baby Green-winged Teal!
Port Rowan Sewage Lagoons: 1 Ruddy Duck (only waterbird)
Big Creek (Long Point) : just stopped to enjoy the view. Sandhill Crane over the road.
Port Burwell Provincial Park: too many people... Some summering Bonaparte's Gulls, Great Black-backed Gulls.. Need to get back on a better day. Also had a Spot-winged Glider here.
Not much else to report but it was fun. My best butterfly was unfortunately run over (by me) -a very fresh Spicebush Swallowtail .
Other random stuff:
A fun bird story:
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=983
and:
Some b-sides from my Newfoundland Trip: (sort of goes along with yesterdays crazy ducks)
Starting with, this hermaphrodite female mallard:
Study through your Mallards for long enough, and eventually you'll encounter an rather unfortunate lady Mallard like this. I havent done any research in advance of this blog post, but what I understand generally happens is a female Mallard gets older and eventually starts producing enough male-hormones that her plumage starts to change. Some can end up having almost every single feather on their bodies plumaged like a male, but the give away is the black and orange bill of a female.
I also decided to create a page for those odd domestic/cross/hybrid freakazoid mallards that we often encounter at our local duck park. They were everywhere in St. John's, and I ended up with some photos:
I'm still not 100% sure why I made the domestic mallard page, but maybe it's worth it.. They are decent photos... right?
Interesting finds. A lot of these weirdos around Sarnia! They must get mixed up with things at the Children's farm.
ReplyDeleteThe Port Lambton hermaphrodite female disappeared early this spring after being forced out by ice the second time. It had been around for three years!