mallards – Picture Walks

December 9, 2019

I’ve been traipsing about on and off for the last week or so looking for interesting things to photograph, but it’s not always easy here in Michigan during the winter months. The trees are bare and the sky is often cloudy. Some days it feels like spring, other days it feels like Siberia. Usually I can dress for the weather and still take pictures —unless it’s raining. Like today. I don’t mind getting wet, but my camera sure does!

One of hundreds of Canada Geese at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

Yesterday, by contrast, it was cold and windy– but good enough for a picture walk. My destination: Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. This sanctuary is home to a large number of ducks and swans and geese who like to hang out along the edges of Wintergreen Lake and create a tremendous racket with all their honking and quacking and squabbling.

The whooper swan, also known as the common swan, pronounced hooper swan, is a large northern hemisphere swan.
It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American trumpeter swan,

On any given day at the sanctuary, you can find hundreds of mallards waddling about on the grass or dabbling about in the lake. They are great socializers and mingle freely among the hundreds of Canada Geese and dozens of swans who also call the bird sanctuary home. It was against this backdrop that I played my duck version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’, the game where you have to find a cartoon type character dressed in a red and white striped shirt hidden among hundreds of other characters and objects that look frustratingly similar.

In the duck version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ I was looking for a lone duck, among the hundreds of mallards, that was not like the others, — maybe a Gadwall or a Wigeon or a Wood Duck. An ‘odd duck’ like this is very hard to find among so many mallards. But yesterday, I found my ‘Waldo’—and his wife! (I knew it was his wife because he made an unexpected conjugal visit right in the middle of the lake while I was trying to take a family-friendly, G-rated photo!) The ducks I was looking at were totally new to me and I just kept snapping pictures so I could, hopefully, identify them later.

‘Waldo’s’ conjugal visit in the middle of the lake. That’s Mrs. Waldo underneath his beak!

In spite of all the resources I had available, however, I could not identify these two ducks–not as a particular breed anyway. What I should have realized sooner rather than later, though, was that these two birds were mallard cross breeds.

After reading up on mallards a little bit, I learned that there are many different ducks in the ‘mallard family’ and those ducks are able to breed with one another. The offspring of these unions would then be referred to as a ‘cross breeds” by some or ‘hybrids’ by others.

The bird that we commonly call a ‘mallard’ can mate with domestic ducks as well as Northern Pintails, American Black Ducks, American Wigeons, Northern Shovelers, Cinnamon Teals, Green-winged Teals and Gadwalls.

I still don’t know what mallard mix produced the birds I saw today, but they certainly were an interesting pair!

November 9, 2018

Once in awhile, I just go on a ‘regular’ walk, not a picture walk. After my 600 picture marathon the other day, I thought it might be a nice to just go on a ‘regular’ walk– and not stop every two feet to take a picture! With that goal in mind, Mel and I strapped on our binoculars and headed out the door for a leisurely ‘regular’ walk down the Portage Bike Trail.

Just before heading out the door, though, I grabbed my camera (I couldn’t help myself!). It wasn’t my usual camera, the Nikon with the super long lens– just my little Canon, the one that got me hooked on nature photography in the first place, the one that takes reasonably good pictures, but is extremely frustrating for me to use (hard to locate target at a distance and hard to hold the camera steady when it is fully zoomed in).

Nonetheless, I grabbed it, mostly because it’s lightweight– and it meant that I was mostly going a regular walk, NOT a picture walk. BIG mistake! I missed getting the best shots of a red tailed hawk, mallards, a bluebird, a cardinal, a bluejay, a pair of gadwalls, a northern flicker, downy woodpeckers and a belted kingfisher! Even though I missed out on a lot of good shots, the pictures I did get were worth posting because they afforded me the opportunity to share some really fun facts!

trail 11-8-2018 2-43-47 PM — It was a super beautiful fall day for a walk!

mallard 11-8-2018 2-39-33 PM — This mallard was ‘dabbling’ in the water nearby and occasionally glanced our way as we stared down at her.

red bellied woodpecker 11-8-2018 2-55-11 PM — I couldn’t get this red bellied woodpecker to look at me, but I decided to include his picture because I always thought it was odd that they were called ‘red bellied’ when their red head was much more obvious. This woodpeckers ‘red belly’ is very pale and rarely seen because it usually has it pressed up against a tree!

KINGFISHER 11-8-2018 3-29-43 PM — This belted kingfisher was really far away and I’m surprised my little Canon got such a good picture! Kingfishers hover over the water hummingbird style looking for fish, then dive head first into the water to snatch their prey with a dagger like bill. Since fish are rather slippery, the kingfisher first wacks its catch sideways against the tree or whatever it is sitting on. Presumably this stuns the fish and makes it easier to maneuver it and eat it.

Gadwalls 11-8-2018 2-32-09 PM — Male Gadwalls. Gadwalls are dabbling ducks—they ride fairly high in the water and tip forward to graze on submerged plants that they can reach with their outstretched necks. They rarely dive. Gadwall sometimes steal food from American Coots.

flicker 11-8-2018 3-47-06 PM — Northern Flicker. Although it can climb up the trunks of trees and hammer on wood like other woodpeckers, the Northern Flicker prefers to find food on the ground. Ants are its main food, and the flicker digs in the dirt to find them. It uses its long barbed tongue to lap up the ants.

downy woodpecker 11-8-2018 3-24-54 PM — Downy Woodpecker. The Downy Woodpecker eats foods that larger woodpeckers cannot reach, such as insects living on or in the stems of weeds.

bluejay 11-8-2018 3-51-25 PM — Bluejay. I couldn’t believe the size of the acorn that this bluejay was trying to bury!! Their fondness for acorns is credited with helping spread oak trees after the last glacial period.

Baltimore Oriole nest 11-8-2018 2-40-54 PM — Baltimore Oriole nest. Baltimore Orioles rank among the world’s most accomplished nest-builders. Female orioles weave nests that hang like pendants. You can spot these hanging nests most easily when the trees have lost their leaves. The female builds the nest in about a week, meticulously weaving long, flexible strands of grass — and adding in man-made materials she finds close at hand.

Tag: mallards

Finding Waldo

Picture Walk or Regular Walk?