Saturday, December 29, 2012

Company, Christmas and Flu oh my

Three reasons for the absence of the blog posts:
  1. My Mom and Dave came up from Florida for Christmas
  2. They stayed with us and we hosted Christmas
  3. The rest of the company left at 9 PM and I promptly went to bed at 10 PM with the flu. Never got back out of bed until 6 PM the next night.

I'm at the shore this weekend weathering the rain and wind closing up the Green House for the winter.  I spent some time looking for rarities but didn't get any. I did manage to get a show from these Long Tailed Ducks.  All photos were taken from the Tuna packing plant along Ocean Drive in light to moderate rain so they are not as bright as they could be on a sunny day.  That doesn't matter as much with these ducks since their color is really stunning in black, white and taupe in any lighting condition. 

Male Long-tailed Duck - coming in for a landing
They used to be known as Old Squaws, but Long-tail makes more sense.  This next photo shows why.

Male Long-tailed Duck
 Here is the female.  Drab little gal huh?

Female Long-tailed Duck
 Here are 2 males that are courting her. The one with the shorter tail on the right is actually her man.  The other guy is trying to woo her away from him.

Long-tailed Ducks

He will have none of it! He chased that longer tailed dude right out of there. You can see him squawking through the splash if you zoom in. 

Long--tailed Ducks

I also got to here them quacking at each other in the bay today. They have a weird quack.  Here is a link to the Macauley Library sound.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sorry you had the flu while your other mother was here. I loved this post with those gorgeous ducks. Had never heard of them before this. Hope you are feeling better.

Happy, HEALTHY New Year.

The HH