A day of above zero temperatures, with days on either side being well below zero, was a day to get out for a comfortable walk around Mud Lake. A few photo observations from the walk.
Thought I'd try my hand snagging a few BIF (Bird In Flight) shots. I proved to be very out of practice, but did catch a few nuthatches.
A stationary chickadee was much kinder to me
Hairy woodpeckers and a few downies were about. The downy dropped in for a treat.
The hairies seemed to want to stay high up in the trees
The cardinals are always hesitant to come to seed drops until you move a good distance away.
This cardinal was stalling, puttering here and there, anxious to get to the seeds we had just dropped, but we were too close.
As soon as the cardinal had had a few seeds, a red squirrel chased it away.
All the squirrels are hoping you'll feed them, but we don't (explicitly that is, they do of course get their share of any seed drops we leave for the birds that don't come to hand. Or that keep coming and coming to hand)
A black squirrel was "preening" itself
The wild turkeys have been making full use of the bridge as seen by their tracks...
And talking about wild turkeys....
While we didn't see any (a rare day), we did find a feather that certainly showed how its owner keeps warm in the winter. A 6 or 8 inch, feather almost all of which was down. An 1" exterior of greyish colour with a white tip all the way across.
We thought maybe owl or hawk, but the web seemed to think wild turkey.
There were a quazillion ducks down by the river. No pin tails in sight, a few goldeneyes up river, but hordes of mallards. If one looked closer, yes there were lots of mallards, but there were a good number of black ducks mixed in with them.
Black ducks at quick glance look like female mallards, but they are darker. Sometimes their bills are a lighter yellow colour. The blue patch on their wings has no white surrounding feathers as in the mallards.
The black and mallard ducks are so similar that sometimes they get mixed up. Such as this male mallard-black mix. (Compared to a mallard male)
Nothing very exciting - just two stumps showing the effect of the warmer weather as their snow caps are reducing and in danger of falling off
