North Park, October 26, 2008

The morning dawned warm and clear at North Park and I was out and about looking for targets. There wasn’t very much moving about this morning but I did find something of interest at Marshall Lake in North Park, a Ruddy Duck.

If you’ve never seen one of these little rascals, and I do mean little, they are quite unique. Their tail feathers stand at about a 60 degree angle from their hind end. It’s almost like they have a spoiler on them. They are very small for a duck too, if I had to guess, they are close to half the size of a mallard.

There was only one Ruddy on the lake this morning along with the usual Mallards and Canada Geese. He wasn’t very exciting either, sleeping most of the time. But I got some pictures and crossed another species off of my list.