Colliers Mills 3/10--Eastern Phoebe

Over by the abandoned house at Collier Mills (there's a story behind that house and I'd like to know it) I heard and finally tracked down my FOY Eastern Phoebe.  Phoebes amuse me because their onomatopoeiatic name is such opposition to how they actually sound, which is generally pissed off. I heard the bird a couple of times before it registered with me and then I had a hard time finding it even though all the trees were bare and the ground open. I would be a lousy bat since I can never figure out what direction a bird song is coming from. Eventually, the bird popped up on a branch then flew off north before I could focus it in my viewfinder. 

More interesting today was the number of Ring-necked Ducks on Turnmill Pond. When I first arrived I counted 24 on Colliers Mills Lake, a decent number, but no big deal. Yesterday, at Whitesbog, I had 295 in total on Rome Pond, Middle Bog, Union Pond, and Ditch Meadow. Walking up west side of Turnmill I found a large flock and counted 108. Adding that to the 24 I already had broke the eBird filter. I can claim exact count on numbers like that, but with diving ducks probably 30% of them are under water at any one time (I wonder if there is an actual study of expected percentage of underwater ducks) but I did count every one I could see. But when I got to the north end of Turnmill I saw my count was wildly off because the ducks were everywhere, so I discarded the 108 count and the notion of exact count and counted by 10's coming up to 640 ducks! That's more like scaup numbers in a bay than ring-necks on a pond, but they may be gathering to take off north. Whatever the reason, it was an impressive sight. 

There's a little pond on Hawkin Road that I always check out. Usually there will be a couple of  species on the pond--maybe a heron and a few ducks, or a kingfisher and flock of blackbirds. But today, as I stealthily approached from a gas line right-of-way, I saw that it was full of waterfowl--geese, Mallards, Hooded Mergansers, a couple of Wood Ducks, and in an out of the way branch of it that you have to bushwhack to get to, a some American Black Ducks. Five Common Mergansers on CM Lake were unusual. So it is still possible to build up your list with duckage. 

I checked 3 of the 4 spots where I've seen Red-headed Woodpecker with no luck. That  was a disappointment. According to eBird's tracker, I walked 5.69 miles and in that trek recorded 31 species:

Canada Goose  78

Wood Duck  2       

Mallard  10

American Black Duck  5

Ring-necked Duck  665       

Hooded Merganser  9

Common Merganser  5       

Mourning Dove  3

Killdeer  5

Turkey Vulture  12

Red-tailed Hawk  1

Belted Kingfisher  1

Red-bellied Woodpecker  3

Eastern Phoebe  1

Blue Jay  8

American Crow  1     Heard

Fish Crow  1     Heard

Carolina Chickadee  2     Heard

Tufted Titmouse  4

Carolina Wren  3

Eastern Bluebird  6

American Robin  10

House Finch  3

Chipping Sparrow  1

Field Sparrow  1

Dark-eyed Junco  3

White-throated Sparrow  8

Song Sparrow  10

Red-winged Blackbird  10

Brown-headed Cowbird  15

Northern Cardinal  1