Marie,
What a dramatic composition capturing the many rhythms of duck life! Your photo taken from the bluffs above affords the opportunity of looking down into the raft and witnessing the immense amount of ducks, all clamoring for interrelationships and individual space. If you look closely, you can pick out courting behaviors, the chance breeding, male challenges, individuals preening, sleeping, and feeding behaviors. I usually see the great Aythya rafts from a horizontal perspective near the island across from Union. They usually present themselves as one enormous seething mass of living creatures moving en masse. Great work! Candace On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Marie P Read <m...@cornell.edu> wrote: > Aurora Bay hosted an enormous raft (actually several) of mostly Redheads > with some Ring-necked Ducks mixed in this morning. The flock was almost > directly below the Lake Road bluffs when I arrived around 9:15 am and had > slowly moved southward farther along the lake when I returned around 10:45 > am. I had a lot of fun shooting still and video, especially the latter, > watching as the raft slowly changed shape as the mass of birds moved around. > One still photo, showing just part of the raft, is here: > > http://www.marieread.com/cpg/displayimage.php?album=42&pos=10 > > Anybody want to count 'em??? > > Otherwise, Center Road had just a single Horned Lark, but a newly manured > field just south of the Triangle Diner (on Lake Ridge Road - correct name??) > had a large flock of possible 200 Horned Larks. > There were scatted Tundra Swans along the lake, but the closest swans that > got me all excited along Lake Road turned out to be Mutes! > > A pretty winter day. > > Marie > > > > Marie Read Wildlife Photography > 452 Ringwood Road > Freeville NY 13068 USA > > Phone 607-539-6608 > e-mail m...@cornell.edu > > http://www.marieread.com > -- > > Cayugabirds-L List Info: > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES > > ARCHIVES: > 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html > 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html > 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds > > Please submit your observations to eBird: > http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ > > -- > > -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
