A pair of Mallard, on the Stockpond.
Tag Archives: Ducks & teals
March 18, 2013
Pulling up to the stockpond this morning–usually my first stop at “the office”–to see what might have arrived, I had to rub my eyes: floating on their mirror images was a pair of Bufflehead Duck, male and female in perfect, elegant spring plumage, natty, turned out as if they were going to the opera. Never been so close to any as this, and they let me look all I wanted, so desperate for a patch of water and rest did they seem. They were even diving and when I told Nancy that later, she said, “They must’ve got their bills and heads stuck!”
When I got out of “the blind” (the Ford Ranger) they both took off, but instead of beating away in the opposite direction as any teal always do from that pond, the birds came straight at me, and passed overhead only at about ten feet. I could even see the female’s pink toenail polish! (or was it the male’s?) They did a quick circle and came in like phantom jets and landed right back where they were, unconcerned that I was standing there.
Ralph W. told me later that he’d seen a pair like them on the beaver pond on 3-Links a year and a few days ago, and that that pond blew out in recent surges of the San Pedro. I guess the Buffleheads had nowhere else to go now, luckily for us. Luckily for them the Peregrine Falcon that had spent a lot of the winter clearing the ducks off the stockpond (I’d watched it take down a female Baldpate, e.g., while I was attending the irrigation just offstage) has apparently now moved on. There have been far fewer wintering ducks and shorebirds around the stockpond this winter, I suppose we’d traded them for the pleasure of the company of Lord Peregrine.
Cooper’s Hawk later blasting through the mesquites at the stockpond, picking off poor passerines for his potluck. Talk about being “afraid of the arrow that flieth by day”! Finally determined that it is this bird I’ve been hearing out in the bosque over a long time–a voice that is not quite kookaburra, not quite Gila Woodpecker, not quite Pygmy Owl, not quite Inca Dove, but with a flavor of all those.
A first Yellow Warbler came to sip at the edge of the mud.
March 14, 2013
The near-tame male and two female Mallard were back on the pond, and while I watched them a fine-plumaged Green-winged Teal landed on the bank of the stockpond and took a very long time to feel at ease enough to enter the water. He was unlike any other individual of this species I’d ever seen: the shimmering cheek patches were the blue of azurite, rather than the usual malachite green.
At last!–a Turkey Vulture, first I’d seen of the year (though David O. reported some aloft a week before) … it was standing next to the pool in Pasture #1 where a leak has made a near permanent water area attractive to wildlife. The vulture was sunning with wings outstretched and it looked huge. It took off, circled up until it joined another, and then another came into the kettle, … and then another … who needs robins to warble Spring into being? We have zopilotes! In this country there is a pleasure in hearing the news get around in this our own local version of winning the ice-break-up date: “Hey, I saw the first vulture!” “Oh no you didn’t–I saw the first one yesterday!” I love how they look down from a dead snag with that put-out, cranky stare of theirs under an arched eyebrow, and think to themselves, “Oh bother!” and with that, projectile crap a stream of the most loathesome smelling stuff–keep your dogs and horses away, amigos. True Desert Noir, a life twisted, perversely humorous some could say …
March 9, 2013
Six female Blue-winged Teal on stockpond, though jittery didn’t take wing as I did my rounds near.
A Least Sandpiper worked the mud edges of the stockpond, sometimes taking short butterfly-like flights but not flying off as I walked the banks and looked over the loafing cattle herd.
Single female Vermillion Flycatcher arrived.
One of the few Yellow-rumped Warbler of the whole winter, still in drab plumage, flitting along The Lane’s mesquite branches. There were almost none of this usually abundant bird to be seen anywhere in Cascabel this year, usually one doesn’t remark on its presence.
March 1, 2013
Five Mallard floating among thin sheets of ice on the stockpond–one typical male in fine spring plumage and two females and among these three birds there were bills of yellow, orange, and orange with a black saddle. The other two Mallards were “Mexican,” one having a green bill and the other yellow. [..]