Waterfowl Count

Did the Prospect Park portion of the NYSOA waterfowl count this morning. The picture shows the boathouse pond--mostly Mallards, a couple of Black Ducks, and if you look real hard, there is the lonely little Wood Duck, our "save" as Peter (Kings County organizer) calls it, because it will probably be the only one in the county. (If you click on the image, you'll get a larger, albeit somewhat blurrier view.)

I counted with another birder whom I'd seen around the park but was never formally introduced to until today. She is quite intimate with the swans in the parks, knows the sagas of the 2 families--sort of an avian Hatfield-McCoy feud in which a truce has apparently been called--and surprised me with her count of 8 swans, since all winter I'd only been coming up with 6. She told me that 2 more swans had flown in very recently. How they'll mix in with the other 6 remains to be seen, but, judging from swan behavior I've observed, it will not be pretty. Especially now that most of the lake and the boathouse pond and all of the Lullwater are frozen, there is not a lot of room for these big birds to stake out their territory. But that might not be a problem until nesting season begins. Who knows, maybe the cygnets from each family will find each other and we'll have a Capulet-Montague story instead.

Our "official" count for the day:

Time: 8:45 to 10:15  1/17/10

Canada Goose     235

Mute Swan     8

Wood Duck     1

American Black Duck     10

American Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid)     1

Mallard     312

Northern Shoveler     13

Bufflehead     1

Ruddy Duck     18

American Coot     13

One Canada Goose had a yellow neckband of NA08.

Other ducks we can’t count: 1 Cayuga Duck, 1 “chocolate duck” hybrid, 11 caramel colored ducks that look like domestic/mallard crosses.