Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A female bufflehead surfaces next to the ice in a rapidly thawing Horse Lake. I felt bad for her, she had been feeding on her own, the only bufflehead on the lake, when a male/female pair flew in and started harassing her. She’d move off on her own, minding her own business, but the other two would still frequently swim over and chase her away. She was the first bird I photographed that morning but this picture is from an hour and a half later near the end of my time watching her.
I’ve often photographed a lone female ring-necked duck on Horse Lake, wondering if its the same bird that returns from one year to the next, but this one was on nearby Long Lake. Might be the same bird, of course the ducks move around especially when they get spooked, but I don’t have any way of knowing.
I love how shovelers often feed by spinning in circles, such as this female who had been swimming in a line with several others before taking a brief break to feed.
A hoody swims in Bower Slough.
A gadwall takes a drink as he swims across Horse Lake. A bit of plant life is trailing from his bill, a leftover from a recent feeding session.
I closed out 2013 watching ducks on Horse Lake, such as this male American wigeon.
It had been raining much of the day but with no wind the surface of Rest Lake was fairly calm. A slight breeze kicked in by afternoon and created a little chop as a nutria swam towards me, creating a small bow wave in the process.
I’ve often thought about creating an album called “You’ve Got a Little Something …” to highlight animals that are carrying around a bit of their environment they picked up along the way. Diving ducks like this lesser scaup sometimes surface with plants that snagged on their back during their last feeding foray, but they often shed them on their next (as happened here, she surfaced after her next dive with a clean back).
I love photographing animals going about their lives in all kinds of weather, but the pouring rain didn’t bother this coot as it fed in a shallow lake, as it was already soaked from diving underwater to dislodge plants from the lakebed.
It was a mostly cloudy day but the sun peaked out early in the morning as I watched this shoveler feeding in Canvasback Lake but it ducked back behind the clouds not long after I took the picture and stayed there.
Boolie 