Northern Shovelers were all over Magee Marsh this past weekend. The male is such a handsome looker, but these ducks are skittish. When I would get out of the car to get a closer shot, they would fly away, even though I was 20+ yards away. For this pair, I stayed in the car and pointed my lens out of the window and got several shots of these two dabbling. But then, for a second, they lined up next to each other. They look so nice together, like a couple in love.
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An ultra-common bird. However, as I walked up on this goose, he looked so cool from behind with the sunlight glazing his face and neck.
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The Long-tailed duck winters in the Great Lakes, at least as long as they can find open water. One of the fun bits of winter birding also includes ducks. Many travel south for winter, but for some species, Michigan lake shores is south after breeding in the Arctic shores of Northern Canada and Alaska as well as Canada's northern islands.
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Another fun part of Northern winter birding is ducks. We might think of waterfowl as a springtime birding experience, but several species winter on the Great Lakes, frequently in very large rafts. Canvasback are sometimes seen in the thousands on Lakes Huron and Erie. I found about 300-400 of these ducks on the Detroit River on a sunny day in December. I had hoped to get a close up shot of a frame full of these ducks, but this was as close as I could get.
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A lot of ducks winter on in-land lakes and the Great Lakes of Michigan. I found this pair along with a raft of thousands of Redheads along with Goldeneyes, Mallards, Canada Geese, Scaups, and others on a lake perhaps ten minutes inland from Lake Michigan. I took this image a week ago. Since then, an arctic blast cooled temperatures from the twenties and thirties down to single digits. The small lake quickly froze over and the ducks departed to other open waters. Hopefully they put those wings to work and headed to lakes that won't be in danger of freezing to a solid mass.
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