With all the Red-winged Blackbirds around it's tough not to keep trying for better photos of them. After watching this one in the cattails, I could tell he was talking to another one closer to me. Now that I know what female Red-wings look like, I looked around and spotted my first in a tree right above me. I took some pics but they didn't turn out very well. Later on I also spotted the first painted turtle of the season in a small slough by the ball fields on the east side. Hoping I'll see some more hatchlings again this summer. When I finally got back to the parking lot there was a lot of activity going on out on the water.
A combination of Canada Geese, Mallards and spawning Carp were making quite the noise and prompted me to walk up to the water's edge. The first thing that caught my eye was a Great Blue Heron, also the first I'd seen this year. But as I started snapping pics of him, a strange looking duck swimming right behind caught my eye. He was a way's out there but obviously not a Mallard as his breast was mostly white.
In addition he had an almost blue looking head. I watched him for a long time and it was tough to get a shot of him without his head buried in the water. When I finally caught glimpses of him with his head out of the water I could see he had an unusually large bill.
Thinking hard back to my bird book I remembered some kind of "Shoveler" duck. Indeed it was a male Northern Shoveler. They apparently eat by filtering aquatic insects and plants with their bill and in this last photo you can kind of see the water draining from his bill. Definitely another first I've seen at Palmer Lake!
With all the Red-winged Blackbirds around it's tough not to keep trying for better photos of them. After watching this one in the cattails, I could tell he was talking to another one closer to me. Now that I know what female Red-wings look like, I looked around and spotted my first in a tree right above me. I took some pics but they didn't turn out very well. Later on I also spotted the first painted turtle of the season in a small slough by the ball fields on the east side. Hoping I'll see some more hatchlings again this summer. When I finally got back to the parking lot there was a lot of activity going on out on the water. 
A combination of Canada Geese, Mallards and spawning Carp were making quite the noise and prompted me to walk up to the water's edge. The first thing that caught my eye was a Great Blue Heron, also the first I'd seen this year. But as I started snapping pics of him, a strange looking duck swimming right behind caught my eye. He was a way's out there but obviously not a Mallard as his breast was mostly white. 
In addition he had an almost blue looking head. I watched him for a long time and it was tough to get a shot of him without his head buried in the water. When I finally caught glimpses of him with his head out of the water I could see he had an unusually large bill. 
Thinking hard back to my bird book I remembered some kind of "Shoveler" duck. Indeed it was a male Northern Shoveler. They apparently eat by filtering aquatic insects and plants with their bill and in this last photo you can kind of see the water draining from his bill. Definitely another first I've seen at Palmer Lake!
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