I had heard through the PA Birds Mailing list that there was a large flock of Canvasbacks and a few Redheads in the open water where the Beaver River meets the Ohio River in the Rochester/Bridgewater area of Beaver County in western PA.
Each year you usually see a few of these diving ducks around here so they aren’t extremely rare but to have numbers like this is rare.
I had only previously seen these two species once before and that was at Duck Hollow last year. I couldn’t get any decent pictures of them then so I was determined to get some today.
If you don’t know, a diving duck will actually dive under the water to eat small fish, plants, mollusks and other critters. Dappling Ducks such as mallards, rarely if ever dive under the water, they usually just tip over with their fanny sticking out of the water. From what I’ve heard, divers actually look like they are flying under the water as they swim around looking for food. I’ve never seen it but I would love to get pictures of it.
A large raft of canvasbacks was about 150 yards off shore just feeding like crazy, I guess that you could call it a feeding frenzy. Because there was so much activity going on with these ducks I couldn’t get an accurate count. I tried three times to count the ducks and each time came up with a different number, the first was 83, the second was 80 and the third was 81. I’ll stick with the count of 81 Canvasbacks which is an incredible number of this species for this area.
I was just happily taking the pictures when I noticed that I was finally getting cold, the camera battery was running low and the memory card was filling up. I decided to walk back to the truck and head for home. On the way back to the truck I caught site of a few Canvasbacks very close to shore. I would be able to get some good shots of these guys if I didn’t spook them. I took my time, crawled towards them and was rewarded with some very good shots of drake Canvasbacks.
Each year you usually see a few of these diving ducks around here so they aren’t extremely rare but to have numbers like this is rare.
I had only previously seen these two species once before and that was at Duck Hollow last year. I couldn’t get any decent pictures of them then so I was determined to get some today.
If you don’t know, a diving duck will actually dive under the water to eat small fish, plants, mollusks and other critters. Dappling Ducks such as mallards, rarely if ever dive under the water, they usually just tip over with their fanny sticking out of the water. From what I’ve heard, divers actually look like they are flying under the water as they swim around looking for food. I’ve never seen it but I would love to get pictures of it.
A large raft of canvasbacks was about 150 yards off shore just feeding like crazy, I guess that you could call it a feeding frenzy. Because there was so much activity going on with these ducks I couldn’t get an accurate count. I tried three times to count the ducks and each time came up with a different number, the first was 83, the second was 80 and the third was 81. I’ll stick with the count of 81 Canvasbacks which is an incredible number of this species for this area.
I was just happily taking the pictures when I noticed that I was finally getting cold, the camera battery was running low and the memory card was filling up. I decided to walk back to the truck and head for home. On the way back to the truck I caught site of a few Canvasbacks very close to shore. I would be able to get some good shots of these guys if I didn’t spook them. I took my time, crawled towards them and was rewarded with some very good shots of drake Canvasbacks.
As I was nearing the truck, I again caught site of something on the river. I used the binos to check it out and spotted 5 Redheads resting not far off of the boat dock near where I was parked. I was able to get some shots of these guys too.
Finally the battery was dead, I was frozen and the memory card was full. It was time to head for home to rest up before watching a little football game this evening.
Oh, the football game? The Steelers won the Super Bowl.
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