On Friday, 3/1, Frodo & I were walking around Peters Lake when we saw our first birder/photographer. Many others would follow. When I asked if he’d sen anything interesting, he answered, yes, a Hooded Merganser and an Arctic Long Billed something or other that I’d never heard of.

I’d heard of a merganser but didn’t really know what it looked like. So, when we got home I checked the Cornell U website ‘ All About Birds’. Soon as I pulled up the pictures, I thought, I’ve seen that bird. The bird has a ‘hoodie’ that it can hold raised :

or folded back :

It occurred to me that if i saw it far out on the lake, without field glasses, with the hoodie folded back, I might mistake it for a Wood Duck :

They’re both quite common in the region. And since they’re both tree cavity nesters they would occupy a similar habitat. But if they’re common in the region, what’s so exciting about that ? Nothing, it seems. It was the second bird everyone was flocking to see.

After a few more birders passed, I’d gotten the name right. The ‘Arctic’ Long Tailed Duck is what everyone wanted to see. So I pulled up it’s profile and pictures :

This is one tough little bird. It’s described as a small sea bird. Their summer nesting range is across Canada & Alaska, from the Arctic Circle north to lands end at the Arctic Ocean. And some will winter along the northern coasts, south to Delaware Bay in the east, and to Washington State on the west coast. But some of these eastern birds will simply move to open water off the coasts of Greenland, for example. For the Winter ! Crikeys mate.

And by Saturday the word had really gotten out. A small ‘anti-tank company’ of birders descended on the lake. I called them that because they were all carrying cameras the size of a small bazooka. This bird was likely heading north again from eastern coastal waters, but finding one on a small lake in W PA is so rare that it even brought out Robert Mulvihill, Ornithologist, from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. We chatted a bit & I asked, jokingly, if there was a ‘birder bat signal’ that brought all these people out. As a matter of fact there is, he said. Turns out, there are a number of ‘list serves’ that will send out an alert, by various means, to subscribers when something noteworthy is sighted. Who knew.

By Sunday it was gone. Journeying on. But the Mute Swan was back again. So, always something interesting to see out there.

Ken Yonek

3/3/19