Puzzles (Lake Springfield Birding)

Happy Easter.  A few days ago, I went around Lake Springfield again.  I know, I'm kind of in a rut, but you see new and different things each time, especially if you vary your route as I did.  I've mentioned this before, but in certain areas around Lake Springfield, Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) have been planted.  Still, you can't tell me it doesn't look like Louisiana, albeit with a lack of Spanish Moss.  This is Cotton Hill Park around Lake Springfield.

Here is another section of that same park, which looks like a great place for an egg hunt.  Like Center Park, this area is also a prime woodpecker habitat.  It apparently used to be planted with a garden, as Grape Hyacinth (Muscari spp.) have been planted here.  While everything else is gone, the exotic bulbs remain.  Thankfully this is not an invasive species, just a persistent grower.

Here's a rather rare picture.  Two  Lesser Scaups (Aythya affinis) are in fairly shallow water,  and one is sitting on a log with a turtle friend.  Note how the feet are towards the rear of the bird. This arrangement enables this duck to dive quickly towards sources of food, propelling it along in the water.  Mallards and other non-diving ducks have feet which are more centrally located.

A lone American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) cruised overhead.  This is one of the two largest birds in Illinois, the other being the Bald Eagle.  Pelicans are easily distinguished at a distance from any other bird species by their head and black wing edges.

Of late, the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) have been migrating north, it seems.  I've seen twenty to thirty  Great Blue Herons in the last week.  Like the heron,  I too had places to go, one of them being Lincoln Memorial Gardens.

What is this?  It doesn't have feathers!  Bloodroots (Sanguinaria canadensis) are still in bloom, but this late winter/early spring bloomer is starting to be out of flower in certain areas at Lincoln Memorial  Gardens.

On the lake, the Punk Ducks, called by less creative people Red-Breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator), proliferated, and there were easily fifty-odd birds.  Of course, a lone Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) decided to interrupt the four males seen above.

As I was watching the two Punk Ducks in the center and the male and female Ruddy Duck, something else appeared.  I haven't seen any Buffleheads in about a month, but sure enough, here was a female Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola), just sneaking along in the back.  [In the front, by the way, is a female Ruddy Duck.]

The dominant species, however, was Lesser Scaup, followed by Ruddy Ducks, and then all the rest.  The first two species probably composed at least 80% of all the ducks on the lake at that time.

 While the Punk Ducks stood out, every other species that day had to be discerned from the mass of black, white, and brown that is a flock of Lesser Scaups and Ruddy Ducks.

Even in a group  that stands out, there's always that one guy who has to show off even more.

I generally go on scavenger hunts through masses of duck photographs, looking for anything rare.  At present, I have a zoom on my camera, the best zoom in my house, that is good enough to take high-ish quality pictures of ducks, and then, in order to figure out what I saw, I look back through the pictures later.  You can try it, too.  What bird looks a bit different in the foreground of the picture below?

If  you saw it, there's a Blue-Winged Teal (Anas discors), a species migrating through this region currently.  It's in amongst the Ruddy Ducks at  lower center.  I have complained about photographing Ruddy Ducks in the past, but that is nothing compared to the skittish and generally well-concealed  Blue-Winged Teal.

Thankfully, certain Punk Ducks are much easier to photograph.  The three ones with brown heads are female, and the two black-headed ones are male.

Here's a much less cropped picture than the ones I usually post. This is with full zoom extended on my camera.  Half of the skill of birdwatching is identifying from pictures later until you can identify it in the field.

Overload of Punk Ducks?  Possibly.  Still a unique and colorful bird?  Yes.  If you look carefully on the duck's back, there are small drops of water, showing that it has dived very recently.

This is with no zoom on the camera.  It's mildly better with my eyes, but you immediately see why zoom lenses are a must.  I don't understand how Audubon operated without one back in the 1800s. Granted, he shot most of the birds first and painted them later.  Ah, the early days of birding.

With no exaggeration, there were thousands of birds out on the lake in this one area, between Lincoln Memorial Garden and the opposite shore.  There's at least one scaup lookalike in the bottom half of the following picture.  However, it's a differing species of pochard duck.  I dare you to find it.

In the bottom left, with a solid black back as a distinguishing feature, is a Ring-Necked Duck (Aythya collaris).  There were at least five visible that day.  Don't ask me how it got the name.  This species should be renamed as Black-backed Pochard or something.  In the next picture are two Redheads (Aythya americana) and at least two male Ring-Necked Ducks.  The Ring-Neckeds, as said before, have black backs, as opposed to the white of Scaups.  The Redheads are gray below and orange-red on the head.  Take some time, and don't try this on a phone.

Ok.  The two Ring-necked Ducks I wanted you to see are in the foreground, at the very bottom.  There's at least two more, but you don't necessarily need to bother about those.  One Redhead is just left  and above the nearly-horizontal line of Scaups which itself is just above center.  That's all the hunting I'll have you do today.

I noticed in this picture that two dark brown shapes joined the Scaups, and those appear to be Horned Grebes (Podiceps auritus).  You can see them in the upper right.

I figured I'd end the day with a far-from-grainy trillium flower, the first I've seen this year.  The Trinity-esque nature of this plant makes it a perfect Easter flower.  Happy Easter again!

Easter History Fact:

The word Easter is likely derived from the Germanic Paganistic goddess Eostre, whose sacred animal, the rabbit, has become the symbol of Easter.  Eostre, by some accounts, was the fertility and sunrise goddess, thus the goddess of spring.  Like most other Christian holidays, although not nearly as much as Christmas or Halloween, Easter incorporates old pagan traditions that the recently-converted peoples of Western Europe brought with them into their new religion, in the 600s.