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Jordan Lake Merg Raft



Hi all,

I went out for a brief spot of birding today, having accumulated my 
lowest total ever for last year and being determined to start the 
year off better.  I headed for Jordan Lake, hoping that perhaps 
some ice-over would have resulted in duck aggregations, but all of 
the recreation areas were (not surprisingly) still closed, and the 
road shoulders were mostly still too snowy for me to risk getting 
my little econobox stuck.  Nonetheless, I did have two nice finds, 
both on the lake just east of the causeway south of the Ebenezer 
Church boat ramps.  The first was a Bald Eagle (an apparent adult) 
flying low over the water, cormorant-style.  This was the first I'd 
seen one flying that way, and I wonder if this is more common than 
I would have thought...?  The second nice sighting was a *huge* 
raft of several hundred (rough guess) Hooded Mergansers - strange 
b/c I've never seen Mergs raft together in these kinds of numbers.  I 
am guessing that these had wandered to the lake from the many 
smaller ponds which had frozen over.  Strangely enough, I was 
unable to find any other duck sp. in my brief search, just a few 
Pied-Billed Grebes and Cormorants.  A good number of 
Bonaparte's Gulls were fishing and squabbling noisily (I personally 
think Bonies are really beautiful and graceful birds).

Anyways, 'twas a nice little outing.

Happy Birding!

-Sandy


--
Sandy Cash
Durham, NC
scash@mindspring.com