A Red Neck in West Annapolis

A RED-NECKED GREBE to be more precise. I stopped by the boat ramp in my West Annapolis neighborhood on Weems Creek at 4PM. I was coming home from work and thought a quick scan of the creek was in order. I noticed three COMMON GOLDEN EYE, one of which had me perplexed. I sent the photo (above) to a friend for a second opinion.It's fairly clear that the ducks in the first photo are in fact COMMON GOLDEN EYE. I am still fairly new at this bird identification thing, so sometimes I prefer to play it safe and get a second opinion.Hoping that I might be able to grab some better looks at the GOLDEN EYE before the sun went away for the night, I hurried back to the boat ramp around 5:30PM. This time I came equipped with scope and tripod, providing for much better 'looks' at that mystery bird.That is when I was lucky enough to find a RED-NECKED GREBE. Did you know that Red-necked Grebes regularly ingest a solid helping of their own feathers? It's true.The feathers that they eat sit in the bird's stomach, but exactly why is not known. Some experts suspect that those feathers protect the digestive system from bones and other difficult to digest bits. (Much like the pizza I ate for dinner.)So that is the end of that story that occurred at the beginning of the weekend! But I've got one more for you...What in tarnation is this? I noticed it swimming around Weems Creek this evening while I was photographing the GREBE. Beaver perhaps? No, their freshwater mammals right? And besides, I've seen lots of beavers in my day. (There are several at Waterworks Park in Annapolis.) Beavers regularly will flop their tails to show you that they are pretty cool. I suppose that tail flop thing could also be used as a scare tactic whenever humans or other potential predators are near. But this particular mammal did no such thing. It just swam off into the headwaters of the creek. Seems a bit small for a RIVER OTTER, but a search of Maryland's DNR website got me no closer to an identification. Have any thoughts? I'd love to hear them.

Have a great weekend,

Dan

Sunday Birding with THE Bird Couple & Good Migrations

I was lucky enough to spend Sunday birding Harford and Cecil Counties (that's the Northeast corner of Maryland folks) with Warren & Lisa Strobel (AKA THE BIRD COUPLE) and Ross Geredien (AKA Good Migrations Photography). That's the crew scanning the horizon at the busy, but very quiet (bird-wise) Turkey Point.We saw quite a good number of birds. Rarities? Well, we didn't see the reported SANDHILL CRANES at the mouth of the Big Gunpowder River. But we did have some great highlights such as the RED NECKED GREBE on the Susquehanna River, the many BALD EAGLES and GREAT BLUE HERONS (they have a rookery there) at the base of the Conowingo Dam. By the way, 'rookery' is one of my new favorite words for absolutely no good reason, other than the fact that it's fun to say.

Go ahead, say it. No no no... try it with a 'Sean Connery' Scottish accent. See? Fun stuff.There was one fun moment I should mention. For several minutes, we enjoyed watching a GREAT BLUE HERON attempt to eat a carp that was far too big. The bird struggled hard and long trying to successfully move this fish down into his gullet. Fish=1 Heron=0. This fish got away. Bloodied, scared and with a stories it can brag about to all of his other fish friends, this carp now can now tell all of his underwater buddies about the time he saw inside a heron's belly.

Finally, as sunset approached, we viewed two enormous rafts of TUNDRA SWANS and AMERICAN COOT at the top of the Chesapeake Bay. No doubt they were at the headwaters of the Bay staging for their long migration North. It was like the line at the airport, but only miles long across the horizon! Well, almost exactly the same as those airport lines really.

I wish I could show you some amazing photos from yesterday, but there were very few that actually came out in focus. True... I did offer up that one of the BROWN CREEPER. But instead of my amateur bird photography, how about a blurry image of my amazingly handsome, now smiling often, cute-as-can-be son Declan? He is my favorite thing these days... all smiling and what not. That is of course, my favorite thing aside from his Mom! She's a cutie too. If I may borrow a phrase from a commercial, Emery is 'a hottie from hottingham'.

Lucky, I truly am.

Enjoy your week,

Dan