November 2013 counting day

Killer and Dee flying away

Today was my counting day at Lake Murray.  This time of year, counting can be a real chore and take most of the morning to do.  This year, I've counted the most coots that I've ever counted there, 1568, and those were the ones that I actually saw.  There might have been another hundred or two that I didn't see.

I only saw one black-crowned night heron, today:

There were a few green-back herons around, though.

I came across some turkey vultures waiting for a pair of gulls to start eating a nice fish when this pelican came, scooped up the fish, and swallowed it.  Here he is swallowing the fish.  He was the only pelican there.

Lots of nutmeg manikins.  I can recognize them by call now and I've found about four different populations of them around the lake.
 

Finally saw my first northern shoveler today.  Usually, they're the first migrating ducks, but this year, they were late:

Also saw my first American wigeons, though they stayed far away:

A pair of gadwalls.  I think this was the ones that might have been released by Project Wildlife.  The male has red feathers on his wing:

There's quite a few scaup at the lake now and I think I also counted a record number of ruddy ducks:

I saw four killdeer, two of which look like Killer and Dee.  Killer is George and Martha's son hatched in the summer of 2010:

Killer

Dee

Here's a close-up of Killer:

I think this might be Dee, but could be Killer again, but most likely Dee:

I won't go into detail about all the other birds I counted.  There were hundreds of yellow-rumped warblers, but not as much as I expected.  And, very few lesser goldfinches, too.

Louie, the Chinese gander, is swimming around the lake and I saw him way on the other side where Bumblefoot is.  He's herding the ducks around there.  I hope he doesn't hurt them.  I wonder if he's looking for Jill.