Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

Sea ducks. Bay ducks. Marsh ducks. So many kinds of ducks! For those of you that think ducks are those aquatic birds that swim around in ponds, eating bread, and gracing the pages of the Boston-based classic Make Way for Ducklings , you would be right about 1 out of 39 times (39 being the number of regularly occurring species in North America). The most common and easily recognized duck is the Mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) and generally speaking, is the one most people think of when they think of a duck. Mallards at Hager Pond in Marlboro, MA. However, as the title suggests, the waterfowl family isn't simply one species. The birds I want to talk about today are some of the toughest, roughest, and even, dare I say it, attractive ducks in the Anatidae family! The name "sea duck" originates in several older documents including the earlier versions of Roger Tory Peterson's field guides and refers to their preferred winter habitat of coastlines, harbors, and the o...

So this past Sunday, I visited a cool spot called Pennypack Trust in Huntington Valley to check out whether I could get some early warblers that were migrating through. When I had arrived, it was already 5 o' clock and I only had about an hour and a half of light, but I managed to take a good number of pictures. As I headed out, a male Northern Cardinal ( Cardinalis cardinalis ) hid in a tangle near the feeders. While a favorite of many feeder watchers and birders, cardinals are a lot more shy and retiring than people realize and are more likely to heard making their obvious chip notes from the undergrowth or by the male's sweet, ringing song in the morning and afternoon. A male Mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) made an appearance with his mate and dabbled around in a small pond near the entrance. I marveled at the different patches and swatches of color that were apparent on its body. The second photo shows the speckled back suggesting that this bird might be younger...

Alpha code. Date Seen. Location. # Seen. Name of Observer. Repeat. This has been my progress since meeting with Marjorie Rines of Bird Observer magazine yesterday afternoon. The task is to assist in the creation of additional BO records that are dated pre-1994 (which they have records for already). Seems simple, right? However, I've been at this for two hours and I've only just broken into the herons. It's extremely tedious, but building a database always is, and I know I'll be pleased with the end product, but still know there's a long way to go. I got to this point by making the rounds on the jobs sites as well as emailing various bodies that might consider my work on these fledgling blogs of mine. After contacting BO by mentioning my blogs and prior authorship in the magazine, I was contacted by Ms. Rines and we set up a meeting at her house. (If any of you have the August 2000 edition of BO, there's an article in there detailing the life history of the...