The second most numerous birds at Elmendorf Lake ten days ago were the Northern Shovelers. These ducks spend their summers from northern New Mexico all the way north to Alaska. It was good to see them back for the winter in large numbers:
One of the more interesting behaviors of the Northern Shoveler is described very well on Whatbird.com: "Socially, they occasionally work together in groups while feeding, rotating like a pin-wheel, stirring up the surface water and skimming it for food particles." That is what they were doing in the first three photos.
Another thing I found interesting was the males clearly outnumbered the females by a very large percentage. The last two photos are of a female Northern Shoveler.
This set of photographs was taken at Elmendorf Lake Park on Thursday, November 21, 2013.
Part 1
Part 2
All the photographs in this series were taken from the northwest end of the large island looking across the lake toward Bird Island. There were only a few Great Egrets, one Great Blue Heron that was being extremely camera shy and more Cormorants than I could count. The only Cormorants I could clearly identify were Neotropic, but I suspect there were quite a few Double-crested ones as well:
This set of photographs was taken at Elmendorf Lake Park on Thursday, November 21, 2013.
Part 1
Part 3
I wasn't able to spend as much time at Elmendorf Lake as I would have liked when this series of photographs was taken, but from what I observed in the time I had, the bird population is in a state of flux with the fall migration still in progress. Keep in mind, this was the day before the first major arctic cold front of the season moved through the area.
For the most part, the year round resident birds (Neotropic Cormorants and Great Egrets) dominated the population. However, a few of the winter residents have begun to settle in. A pair of American Coots were among these seasonal residents * :
This is the first of a three part series of photographs taken at Elmendorf Lake Park on Thursday, November 21, 2013.
Part 2
Part 3
* This links to the November 8th post, "A Bit of A Riddle," regarding the inconsistency between published range maps and the observed presence of the American Coot. I wasn't able to get a photograph of the Great Blue Heron I observed on this visit to Elmendorf Lake, but the same inconsistency also applies for this heron.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The San Antonio River Authority and City of San Antonio is presenting their second Elmendorf Lake Park Improvements Public Workshop this evening. This reminded me I have numerous photos of the wide range of birds I encountered on my walk at Elmendorf Lake Park on Friday, March 22, 2013 I have yet to post.
Most of the birds I photographed during this walk are common to the Lake. I will present those photos as a single set in Thursday's post. However, there was a small flock of Ruddy Ducks swimming on the Lake. This is a rather distinctive looking bird that I think deserves its own post:
