Late this afternoon, between 5:00 and 6:00, as I walked past the small pond on Summit Drive, I saw two spots of white out in the water that might be ducks, but I hadn\u2019t brought my binoculars because it was cloudy and getting late, so I thought it was too dark to see much \u2013 and of course, any time I don\u2019t take binoculars, I\u2019m certain to run into something interesting. I walked off the road, toward the pond, and as I got closer I could see a bat circling over it. A Great Blue Heron emerged from the brush on the western edge and flew up in slow, ponderous motion. By then I could see for sure that the two white spots were ducks, and that there was also a third duck of a duller color. I kept walking toward the pond, and not surprisingly, they flew \u2013 with a whistle of wings and a flash of white marked by partial black bands. They were Hooded Mergansers, which I\u2019ve seen on the pond once before, a year or two ago, two males and one female.<\/p>\n
Hooded Mergansers are fairly common ducks here during the winter months, but the showy looks of the males are far from common \u2013 with big fan-shaped crests that, when raised, show a snowy white patch surrounded in black, and give them an impressive, large-headed appearance. The bill is long and very thin, the back is black, the sides a dull orange or rufous color, and two black stripes mark the edges of a white breast. <\/p>\n
Altogether, it\u2019s a colorful and unusual-looking duck that lends an exotic touch to a plain little pond on a gray winter day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late this afternoon, between 5:00 and 6:00, as I walked past the small pond on Summit Drive, I saw two spots of white out in the water that might be ducks, but I hadn\u2019t brought my binoculars because it was cloudy and getting late, so I thought it was too dark to see much \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}