catching up
Nov. 29th, 2010 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI had a very nice holiday with my NJ relatives. I delivered some overdue presents. The toy puffins for the boys went over well, and they liked the book about the sea captain, but the book about the digger was the big hit--no surprise. The grownups liked their presents too. :-) We had a nice dinner with my sister-in-law's family on Thursday and lots of hanging out time before that and on Friday (including a viewing of Chicken Run on their new flatscreen TV, which I helped my sister wall-mount). Saturday we went out to a nature preserve to see birds. It was very cold (especially with the wind, which was making the straps on my bike rack hum like taut stays on a schooner) and a long way to go, but it was a lovely spot. I hope I can go back there someday.
A short list of the birds we saw
A great blue heron (hard to pin down because he seemed to be folding his wings very small or inside out so that he appeared mostly black!)
gulls (mostly herring gulls, I think)
ducks (mostly mallards, and maybe some black ducks or teal or gadwalls, but definitely some hooded mergansers and almost certainly some northern pintails.
a lot of very small birds (possibly least or semipalmated sandpipers, possibly semipalmated plovers, outside possibility sanderlings--I wish I could remember a clearer view of their bill)
Canada geese and some swans. The latter presumably must have been mute swans, but I could have sworn they had all-black faces, which would provide equally unlikely options of either trumpeter swans or tundra swans. It looks as if juvenile mute swans can have black bills, so maybe that's the answer.
A short list of the birds we saw
A great blue heron (hard to pin down because he seemed to be folding his wings very small or inside out so that he appeared mostly black!)
gulls (mostly herring gulls, I think)
ducks (mostly mallards, and maybe some black ducks or teal or gadwalls, but definitely some hooded mergansers and almost certainly some northern pintails.
a lot of very small birds (possibly least or semipalmated sandpipers, possibly semipalmated plovers, outside possibility sanderlings--I wish I could remember a clearer view of their bill)
Canada geese and some swans. The latter presumably must have been mute swans, but I could have sworn they had all-black faces, which would provide equally unlikely options of either trumpeter swans or tundra swans. It looks as if juvenile mute swans can have black bills, so maybe that's the answer.
