Hello all. Took our first trip out in quite awhile down to Lake Byllesby in search of quacking birds. We first drove to the picnic area on the south side of the lake, finding a few scattered Horned Larks in the fields, but found the water at the boat ramp to be completely frozen and devoid of ducks. We headed over to the west end vantage point after that and found conditions much nicer. We almost immediately found about four (there may be more) Greater White-fronted Geese beyond the cat-tails to the south. Scattered off to the north side of the view were many, many ducks. Geese and mallards crowded the majority of the lake, but there were a good number of others there as well. Among them were: Gadwalls American Widgeons Canvasbacks A few Redheads, but we lost them Lesser Scaup Many, many Ring-necked Ducks A good number of Northern Pintails Quite a large number of Common Goldeneye A single Common Merganser male.
We looked hard, but couldn't find any of the Snow Geese reported earlier. Nice trip for duckin'! - Leo WM