Thursday, March 2, 2023

A "Waterfowl Fallout" Kind of Day ~ March 2, 2023

I got a text from Adam Miller stating that he had found a good number of waterfowl species at both the Nazareth Quarry and near the Martins Creek power plant. I was planning to go to the Martins Creek area anyway, so I headed up there. As I was getting close, I got another text from Adam that he had a possible "Eurasian" Green-winged Teal, also known as a "Common" Teal, at the Riverton Road pond. I called him and told him I was only several minutes away. When I got there, the bird was all the way at the back of the pond. It had the white horizontal stripe along the wing, pointing to a "Eurasian" or "Common" Teal, but it also showed the vertical white bar on its sides, pointing to our "American" Green-winged Teal. So, we both agreed that it was a "Eurasian x American" hybrid of a Green-winged Teal. It was only the second one I'd ever seen in the county. The first one was back on April 5, 2014 near Newburg. That bird's story and photos of it can be seen at this blog post. Feeding with this bird was a pair of Blue-winged Teal. I got some poor, long-distance documentation photos of both species.

I left Adam and headed over to Martins Creek. Most of the birds that he had reported earlier were still there, including 3 Long-tailed Ducks and 22 Redheads.

Also there were 19 Buffleheads, 12 Mallards, 10 Northern Pintails, 8 American Wigeon, 4 Ruddy Ducks, 2 American Black Ducks, a Greater Scaup, and an American Coot among 250 Ring-necked Ducks and around 200 Canada Geese. At the boat launch on the Delaware River, the 12 Tundra Swans reported were also still present.
The afternoon's birding produced a nice total of 16 species of waterfowl plus an unusual hybrid.

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