What is your favorite bird? And every fowl encounter you've had under the sun

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Thanks old grey mare. I’ve looked on ducks unlimited and told a couple of neighbors who train bird dogs about them. Hopefully, I’ll get a positive i.d.
I looked at the photo gallery for mergansers from your link and it looks much like the common merganser that comes up as the main photo.
They were so beautiful today. Hopefully, I will be seeing ducklings this spring.
 
It’s certainly possible. I love watching the ducks in my area but do not know the varieties. This is the first time I’ve seen these and I hope they stick around.
 
I hope that you get your positive I.D. from your neighbors. It would be nice to know. 🙂

Baby ducklings would be great! 😀 ❤️
 
Your mohawk description made me think female red-breasted over common merganser. Their crests are more exaggerated than common mergansers although female common mergansers will show a little crest. Red-breasted are more common in bays and coastal habitats. When I was in Oregon last December I counted over 80 in one of my favorite bays. Quite the sight.

The way to ID mergansers from other ducks is their long, thin, serrated bills. They’re good for catching fish,hence their colloquial name ‘fish ducks’.

Here’s a female Common Merganser and her chicks I encountered at Lake George in New York last summer.(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
I’m going to have to become more observant. I remember orange striping of some sort on the beak. The birds seemed rounder than the adults in these pictures and the colors were so sharp. The silver/grey backs gleamed and the white tummies were scintillating: silvery-white the heads were a rich copper/russet. They were in the middle of the lake and I was never able to get very close.
Give me a few days. Getting home in the daylight is becoming more likely with our springing forward and the days lengthening. But yes, there was that ruff on the back of the head. I foresee lots more walks in my future.
 
oldgraymare2 said:
I’d love to put up a feeder off of our balcony but I’m afraid it would also draw wasps up here.
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We get a lot of paper wasps here too 😠. As soon as it reaches a certain warm temperature, out they all come. I’m constantly having to evict them from under the eaves at my mom’s house.

This hummingbird feeder I’m using is supposed to discourage wasps too, but time will tell as it gets warmer. There are already two neighbors near me with this type of feeder out, and the hummingbirds, which are quite territorial, engage in miniature dramas and battles every morning, chasing each other around and making their defiant little birdcalls.
 
Upon further review, this is not a Red-breasted Merganser, but a Common Merganser. You can tell by the sharp delineation between the neck and breast. Red-breasted Mergansers have thinner bills as well. It’s just goes to prove, you can’t believe every thing you see on the internet.

In other birding news, a friend of mine just posted a short video she took of a flock of Red-breasted Mergansers fishing the shallow water along the gulf coast. Coincidence?
 
Jamal I was cross with my phone this evening driving to my parents,on a power pole one on top and two on each side were a family of Wedgetailed Eagles .The offspring was almost as large as the parents.My phone camera (or was it just me not using it to its full potential ) couldn’t zoom up .

 
We painted this in class last week. I’m going to do a large version, I was inspired so much by it.

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No, that’s my reference photo. Here’s my unfinished demo from class that day.

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When we lived in the Dandenongs outside Melbourne we had one of those rotating clothes lines. We’d get 4 or 5 kookaburras perched on it while my dad rotated it, feeding them strips of lunch meat. They’d dutifully beat them to death against the clothes line before eating them.
 
Here’s a Lucy’s Warbler, a female House Finch and giant rock ant in my backyard. The Lucy’s Warbler just showed up again this year. I’ve been hearing them for the last couple of mornings, but I haven’t seen one yet.

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Update: The hummingbird feeder is a big hit! This guy has now claimed it as his own, and vigorously defends it against any usurpers who dare to try and come for a drink. I think we have Anna’s Hummingbirds here, but the poor lighting on my balcony does not show off their green and red plumage.

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Anna’s Hummingbird’s naturally look chunky and dark. That’s what you got there. On one of your earlier pics it looked like you had a Black-chinned Hummingbird. I could tell by the white on the throat.

I was going to say, if you keep the nectar level low in your feeders (too far for a bee/wasps proboscis to reach) that should deter them. I think that model of feeder can take bee guards as well. Cool pics, thanks for sharing.
 
Don’t laugh at our Kookaburra…
Could be 🙂
Driving past the power lines where they sometimes sit ,I can’t help thinking how serious they look…and how big their heads are.
 
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