July Counting Day!

I decided to do some bird counting today because my work and exercise schedule would make it difficult to to it until the middle of the month.  Usually, I don't like to count right before a holiday because it gets busy the few days leading up to the holiday.

There are at least a dozen western grebes still at the lake, enjoying themselves in the water.

Here is a photo of a male nutmeg manikin guarding the large nest on the upper right side of the photo.  I don't know much about manikins and their nests, but there appeared to be at least two females hovering and hopping around it.

This was a funny scene before this photo was taken.  At one moment, a guy was fishing, but the view of him was blocked by a tree.  Next thing I know, I see this gull hanging onto a fish and I thought maybe he was trying to steal the fisherman's catch and was being reeled in.  Nope, he grabbed this himself, brought it to shore, and began to eat it all by himself.  I think this is a western gull, but he looks a lot like a herring gull:

We have a new dumped duck at the lake.  He is a three month old Indian runner drake.  He was eating all kinds of things that were bad for him because he didn't know what he was supposed to eat.  He even swallowed a cigarette butt which could make him extremely ill.

He found a couple of mallard friends around his own age that are showing him a little bit about food.  But, he's extremely hungry.

Snowie is down to four ducklings.  At first, I thought the weak duckling was the one that is missing, but he's there in the bottom of the photo.  Snowie is not being a great mama and lets her ducklings swim and run all over the place, leaving them vulnerable to gulls that can grab them from the water.  These ducklings are just over a week old now.

I found the mama with one duckling at the "duck bench" doing OK.  I also found the mama who had the two ducklings on the same side of the lake and she's down to one, also.  I did not see the mama with the two ducklings from the other side of the lake.

And, finally, I saw this beautiful hooded oriole watching over two females in his spot.

I forgot to add that I saw two male Allen's hummingbirds, but they were too fast to photograph.

That's not all the birds I counted, but the highlights of my counting day.