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Pond update, spring arrivals (the rest of the story!)





Sorry for the inadvertent partial post.  My e-mail program has picked up this
nasty habit of shutting down and sending whatever I was working on at the time
(or maybe I've found some secret combination of keystrokes that does the same
thing :-)

I hit a couple of the ponds around the area over the weekend.  I was hoping to
dig up some Pectoral SP's as they arrived in the area on the 28th of March last
year.  No luck yet.  The NCSU Dairy Pond had several species of ducks including
N. Shoveler, GW Teal, Bufflehead, Ruddy, Mallard, and scaup Sp.  Once again, the
scaup were problematic.  Nice clean white sides (pointing toward greater), green
sheen to the heads, and a fairly rounded top of the head.  However, as I have
noted of late, scaup look rather different when they are wet (i.e feeding) than
dry.  Once these little guys dried out they had a nice little peak behind the
center of the head's topline.  Once again I had to resort to some better
fieldmarks, namely the size of the black nail on the bill and the length of the
white wingstripe.  Both were consistent with lesser scaup.  Interestingly the
heads showed a green gloss when wet, but a purple gloss when dry (angle of
sunlight was consistent).  Anyway, the only shorebirds I
could find were a couple of Snipe snoozing on the shoreline.

Greenview Pond put on a nice show on Sunday.  The biggest news (literally) is
the return of the Tundra Swans after a brief absence.  2 were present yesterday
afternoon.  Also in the area were a small group of Blue-wing Teal, a half-a-slew
of Snipe, and 3 beavers.  The Snipe (9) were all hanging out together on a
little flat.  John Argentati has seen and heard a yellowlegs lately, but the
Snipe were the only shorebirds I could muster.  John's platform feeder held, at
one point, 4 White Crowned Sparrows (2m, 2f).  A nice treat for central NC.

This morning Ritter Park had Blue Grey Gnatcatchers, Yellow-Throated, Pine, and
Black & White Warblers.

Best,
Steve Shultz
Cary, NC
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