Things I saw just walking around.

Lots of friends spotted at the lake today.

Lady ruddy duck, resting tidily on a small rock, probably on her way to breed somewhere cool:

When she saw me photographing her, she looked a bit indignant, then waddled off.

Resident pelican is getting all decked out in bright orange, head tuft, and the beginning of a beak bump poking out from behind the wing...

Eared grebes still going strong, but they'll be gone any time now...

I think I bore them: they're always yawning when I approach. Right before they dive underwater to show just how jaded they are.

A rare sighting of a land cormorant. It was pulling at some frayed string at the edge of the rowing dock. Nest materials perhaps?

Night heron with green and gray stripe background.

Some cheerful humans who got excited when they saw me pointing my camera into trees. So I took their picture too. They waved (not pictured).


And another in the series of "animals sniffing the camera."

Friends!

Joy Fall

It's fall! Some birds are just totally in shock.
Heron: "DUDE it's NOVEMBER WTF!"

Migrant birds are returning to the lake. Here's a glaucous winged gull that attracted my attention with its strange yodeling call. It sounds quite different from a Western gull when claiming food. Or maybe only when it's claiming a bit of roast chicken someone dumped. I don't know whose action is more surprising: the guy who thought it would be fine to throw a chicken to the birds, or the pigeons who thought it would be fine to eat it. Blech, guys, srsly.

Ruddy ducks have arrived. These are easy to ID at long distances because of the white cheek, and the (usually) long pointy tail.

Ring billed gulls are back too and looking for action. "Hey, where's MY roast chicken?"

And of course scaups. I have vowed that this will be the year I learn to tell greater from lesser. I have long wondered why the majority of scaups I see at the lake are male. One theory I had was that females and males arrived and left at different times. The first one I saw this year was female: