A New Species at the Park!

When I arrived at the park this Sunday I had only walked a few feet before running into another park goer and we struck up a conversation. And while we were talking then another friend of mine showed up. This friend is a much more experienced birder than myself and I figured maybe we'd see more if we hiked together. Though we were lucky enough to spot a Barred Owl right off the bat, the park was pretty quiet for the remainder of our hike. On days like this when there's just not much to see, I like to spend more time looking at the Mallards in the duck pond on the southeast corner of the park. As we arrived I told my friend "I keep thinking I might see a Black Duck here one of these days." Well what do you think happened next? My friend says "say, what's that one over there?" As we both looked through our binoculars, it wasn't quite obvious at first. One lone duck looking quite similar to a female Mallard but darker. Was it the elusive American Black Duck that I was hoping to see? As we watched other Mallards part left and right the duck in question finally came into full view and YES indeed it was an American Black Duck! Now I think I might have seen this species earlier in the year down at Black Dog Road in Bloomington, but they were so far away I couldn't positively ID them. But here was one right in front of me and with Mallards to compare with! I could hardly believe what an opportunity this was. At the time I only knew 2 characteristics to look for in a Black Duck; a darker overall color, and an olive-green colored bill (as opposed to a bright orange bill of a female Mallard). These where visible but at this proximity I learned yet 2 more characteristics. Maybe the most obvious one –at this distance anyway– is the lack of white "edging" or borders on the outside of the blue wing patch that can be seen on Mallards. On the Black Duck the blue patch is bordered by black only and then stops. Also both Mallards tend to have white tail feathers jutting out their rear where the Black Duck has the same color tone all the way back. I was so excited to finally see this species of Waterfowl close up and even more excited to find it at Palmer Lake Park! My friend, the experienced birder had seen them before but had stated that he'd only seen them very far north up near Orr, Minnesota. So it was even a thrill for him too! This species has been reported recently on the river at Fort Snelling State Park so they are indeed further south. We spent maybe 15 minutes watching it before finally moving on. Near the south side of the park we spotted a group of 4 deer leap across 69th Avenue and into the PLP area. They ran right in front of us but I was unprepared and didn't get a very good photo. After getting back to our vehicles I finally looked at the time and realized that we had been hiking around the park for 6 hours!