Deer Lakes Park February 16, 2008
For the two weeks or so before this outing we had some very cold weather and several inches of snow. This in turn will lead to most open water being frozen. On my last outing I saw that Lake Arthur at Moraine was a little less than ½ ice covered and that was two weeks before this trip. A few days before this trip I made some phone calls to park offices to find out the amount of ice coverage on the lakes at area parks.
Lake Arthur – 85-90% covered, some waterfowl on the open water on the main lake.
North Park – The person that I talked to must beam herself to the office because she said that she didn’t drive past either of the lakes at the park. (You can’t get to the office without going past one of the two lakes there.) She said that she had no idea how much ice was on either of the lakes.
Deer Lakes Park – The person that I talked to was very knowledgeable and helpful. They installed aerators in the lakes to keep them open for waterfowl during the winter so each of the three lakes had some open water. He also told me that there was the usual Canada Geese and Mallards plus some other uncommon types. Needless to say I was heading to Deer Lakes Park.



I had never been to Deer Lakes Park before so I didn’t know what to expect. I had a rough idea of the layout thanks to the map I found online but that doesn’t replace actual knowledge. So using the GPS I was able to find my way to the lakes with no trouble at all. At the lakes I found a small flock of Canada Geese and the usual Mallards as I was told. So after setting up the equipment I took some warm up pictures of the mallards. Some of these pictures actually came out rather well, I was surprised. Most of the ducks was standing around on the edge of the ice. I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to go in the water this morning either, the temperature was in the high teens.


While walking to the other end of this lake I saw a very strange looking duck, I couldn’t get any pictures of him at the time though. I made my way to the far end of the lake and found a new duck species to me. I wasn’t sure at the moment what it was so I just started taking pictures. It was a diving duck so I got into his rhythm and eventually got some pictures that were keepers. The entire time I was shooting the diver I kept my eye on the odd duck and persistence paid off when I was able to get a handful of pictures of this strange duck.



With the cold temperatures and the snow/freezing rain mixture that was falling I barely lasted two hours on this outing. So I was on my way home wondering what those two ducks were. When I got home I checked my reference books and found that the diver was a Common Goldeneye but I had no luck with the odd duck. I didn’t find out what it was until almost two months later; I saw a post on PA Birdline about a Cinnamon Teal-Bluewing Teal hybrid that was seen on Canonsburg Lake in Washington County which is south of Pittsburgh. The post said that pictures were available at the user’s online album. I went to the album and sure enough there was the mystery duck or one just like it. Now this was an odd hybrid because to my knowledge Cinnamon Teal rarely if ever migrate east of the Mississippi River and Blue Wing Teal rarely if ever go West of the Mississippi. Anyway somehow a pair of them got together and made at least one youngin’ and I was lucky enough to get pictures of him.