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Jordan Lake Merg Raft
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: Jordan Lake Merg Raft
- From: "Sandy Cash" <scash@mindspring.com>
- Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 19:15:08 -0500
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
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