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By some miracle (not involving Chimayo, holy dirt, holy chiles, or prayer), I was enough over the flu to go hear music last night and go to the cove to count ducks today. I even had some duck bread to feed them.
Not a whole lot of the ducks wanted to be fed though. Two swans, one still in juvenile plumage, came over for awhile. Igor stood there and only pecked at what landed right in front of him. He wouldn't take on the gulls. Eight mallards including the one with the bad leg, showed a little more interest than the swans and geese. By far the most interest was from the gulls. Hundreds of them wheeled around over my head. I counted 120 ringbilled gulls before I lost track.
|
species |
parking lot side |
golf course side |
|
common name |
count |
count |
|
ringbilled gulls |
120 |
|
|
starlings |
20 |
|
|
swans |
2 |
|
|
Canada geese |
2 |
100 |
|
mallards |
8 |
|
|
buffleheads |
2 |
8 |
|
hooded mergansers |
2 |
|
|
red breasted mergansers |
2 |
|
|
common goldeneye |
2 |
|
|
crow |
1 |
I had a theory that the other Canada goose who hangs out with swans must be Igor's mate but now I'm not sure. It didn't come in to shore when the breaders came (us or the hordes of others) and it was never actually with Igor, just in the general vicinity of the swans and nowhere near the horde of the wild geese. More observations are clearly called for.
Even though I notice a lot about behaviors I don't write it in the notebook. I guess I'm not sure what to write. Maybe I have an idea that there's a defined way to write field observations and since I don't know the defined way I'm not "supposed" to write them down. Like I want to know the rules first. Not that anybody but me reads the notebook. This isn't a real project yet. But it will be.
I had never seen a common goldeneye at the cove before. At first I thought they were oddly marked buffleheads, but a trip back across the street to the book in the trunk of the car confirmed common goldeneye. I double checked on my CD-ROM before adding it to my life list.
Still wanting to be out in the beautiful day but too weak and tired from the flu to walk along the bike path, we crossed over the bay to the Cranston side and poked around Patuxet Village historic district. We browsed a nice bookshop where I finally found out that the reason I haven't been able to find the Scenic Rhode Island Foundation calendar this year is that they didn't do one nor are they doing it next year. So much for getting some of my photos into it. I bought the Providence Journal Bulletin calendar instead.
We had huge cones of ginger ice cream at a little place overlooking the Patuxet River. Delicious.
Further downriver, we came across a cove with 4 swans and 2 Canada geese swimming. Then I saw 2 American wigeons come surfing in on the current. As we watched, more and more wigeons arrived. They streamed in from the bay in pairs, quads, and sixes. It looked like a regular wigeon convention.
Yesterday was the first day I'd really been out of the house all week. Nancy and I went to dinner at Pakarang with Peter & Elsje, then to Stone Soup. Hundredth Monkey was incredible. Mance Grady is the g*d of the bodhran. Their set was so exciting I was dancing in my seat. After the intermission, Lui Collins came on. She explained she had lost her voice and was celebrating one month of the flu. A month! Drat. Does that mean I have that to look forward to? Anyway, she ended up having to recite the lyrics rather than sing them. Such a shame. Her songs are really lovely. It was fun though. A different experience.
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