Friday, February 16, 2018

Friday Fling: A River Run

I took off from work after lunch today.  Weather was decent so I had to make up for lost time!
With the mild weather yesterday, the St. Clair River cleared out fairly well of ice.  However, there was a brisk NW wind which pushed ice towards the Ontario side.
There were quite a few ducks around Sombra, which I never took much time to sort through.  I probably missed something good!
Gulls were on the move today with lots all along the river.  A few Glaucous were seen.
I drove straight up to Sarnia Bay and spent some time there.  Unfortunately, most of the ducks and gulls were on the far side towards the rocks.




The male Wood Duck was easy to pick out.  I think it is pretending to be a Mallard, as it hangs out with them and comes to the parking lot for handouts (which seems to be bread, unfortunately).
There has been an American Wigeon around, but I could not pick it out.

There have been many hybrid ducks (and gulls) found on the river this winter.  One such uncommon one is a Redhead X Canvasback.  It was too far away for any good photo today.
Several Glaucous Gulls were on the ice in the Bay.





I moved downriver to Corunna and sat at Guthrie Park for some time.  There was not a heck of a lot there today, but a good number of gulls at least.




White-winged Gulls were scarce as I only saw one Iceland and one Glaucous here.

Iceland (Kumlien's) Gull


I did pick out a likely Glaucous X Herring gull in the mix.  There have been several of these of various ages on the river this winter.

On to another weekend.....


3 comments:

  1. I must get up along the river before the winter is over. It is the best chance I will have to add the white-winged gulls to the year list, I expect. The last time I was there was on the CBC.

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  2. By the looks of your new header photo, you had a good day today! ;-)

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