Harmarville and North Park, May 4, 2008

Dave, one of the characters that I work with at the store, told me of a Green Wing Teal that he had been seeing in Harmarville, PA. I was familiar with the area which is less than 20 minutes from my house and we were due for some rain around 10 am so I got to Harmarville around 6:45am to look for this teal.

This part of Harmarville has a small marsh or wetlands area behind a shopping plaza. I parked the truck a short distance away from where he told me to look for this teal, set up my equipment and walked to where this teal was supposed to be living. I got to the general area and sure enough there he was feeding n the grass on the edge of the water. His spring mating colors were stunning. I just took my time and kept snapping pictures of him. At one point I was a little less than 25 yards away which is outstanding for this species. These little ducks are usually very skittish, before today the closest I have been was about 80 yards.


I was so busy concentrating on the teal that I didn’t notice the other ducks milling about in the grass and gravel at the edge of the marsh. A pair of mallards brought their newly hatched young out to eat. I swung the digiscope in their direction and got some good shots of these youngsters.


About 10 minutes after the mallard family showed up a pair of Canada geese brought their new goslings out as well. The goslings seemed to take over where the ducklings were. The ducklings didn’t like this so they went running to mom. Mom mallard was sitting on the ground enjoying her time away from the kids until they came running to her for protection from the goose bullies. Mom mallard patiently stood up and all of the ducklings hid under her. I was laughing out loud while watching this go on.


I turned back to the teal and saw that he was joined by a Wood Duck drake. These two guys were bouncing all over the place and it was nearly impossible to get shots of them standing still.

The teal, wood duck, mallard and goose families soon made their way back to the marsh and I decided to make a run to North Park to see what was there. I got to Marshall Lake at North Park about 30 minutes later to find that the county had blocked access to the footbridge to the island. I guessed that this was to protect the three pairs of nesting geese that took up temporary residence there. Thunder rumbled in the distance so I decided that it was time to go home.