Day 17.326: FeederWatch surprises

Many of the expected visitors made our list this weekend:

Eastern bluebird perched on the edge of the birdbath

But there were some surprises too - two first timers (for the FeederWatch lists):

House sparrow - we see them nearby, but not at our feeders before this

White-throated sparrow. Not sure if we've seen one in the backyard before, but certainly not on a FeederWatch day. We see them nearby quite often during migration.

A large hawk flew by but landed  a little out of our count area and, since it managed to perch where this was our only view, we would have struggled to positively identify it in any case:

By size alone, I suspect red-tailed hawk but I'm far from sure.

Day 17.325: Dabbling and diving

After our visit to East Point on Friday, I recalled that we had had a recommendation to visit a pond near Fortune's Rocks Beach where various ducks could often be seen. I couldn't remember all the details, but we took the small detour and found ourselves at Etherington Pond and we certainly saw some ducks.

But first a house finch - because she posed so nicely.

Then there were the dabblers:

American black ducks

Two more, the right hand one possibly indicating some hybridization with mallard

This makes me smile. Three mallards up-ended in the pond.

And the divers (in this case all buffleheads):

Female (L) and male (R). We saw at least six, but it was hard to count as they were spending a good deal of the time out of sight below the water.

The males' extremely white head patches were a photography challenge.

Day 17.324: Exile #2's Sunday Column #502

Exile #2 writes...

After a fun morning at church decorating the space for advent, Exile #1 kindly volunteered to drive Exile #4 back to Worcester. It has indeed been a fun weekend. Exile #1 showed these whippersnappers of ours how to rock it on a Sega Genesis (Megadrive for UK folks), whilst Exile #4 proved that their gaming skills had not gone at all rusty during their time away by beating us in a game of Catan. We had some drama as E5N1 was up against a college application deadline but somehow he managed to sneak in under the wire and we could all sigh with relief, and appropriately enough, plenty of thanksgiving!

A recent frosty morning