It's so nice to see the waterfowl back on the ponds. This one pond I visited has such a wide variety of ducks all so busy! I could spend hours watching them and in fact I did taking a multitude of photos. It took me awhile sorting through them to chose the best to share, thus my Sublime Sunday is being posted on a Monday!
Here we go - off to the pond...
The first few pictures were of a small pond by the road where pairs of ringed-necked ducks were making their nesting grounds.
Beautiful Pair of Ring Necked Ducks
Ringed-neck Duck Splashing in the Water
Male Ring-necked Duck Stretching Wings
In the field by that pond there was a flock of geese feeding.
Geese Feeding in the Field
Close Up Pair of Canada Geese
At the main pond I was visiting there were a pair of grebes busy building their nest.
Pair of Grebes Swimming by Old Reeds
Male Grebe Bringing Nesting Material to Female
The grebes are built quite funny with their legs set far back on their body.
At the Feathered Photography blog they give an explanation for this:
Grebes are unique to most other water birds in two ways that are related to this behavior: 1.) their legs are attached to their bodies at the rear, rather than underneath and 2.) the toes of grebes are lobed instead of webbed.
Having legs attached at the rear allows for efficient swimming but causes extreme clumsiness while walking – they rarely venture on to land, but when they do they often fall down after just a few steps.
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Female Grebe Getting on Nest
Pair of Grebes at Nest
A duck that was quite common on the pond was the canvas backs with their striking red heads and eyes.
Close Up Canvas Backed Ducks
3 Male Canvasback Ducks
Canvas Back Scooting Across the Water
Pair of Canvas Back Ducks Female Stretching Wings
Close Up Canvas Back Ducks Female Stretching Wings
The canvasback males were quite aggressive during mating season as you can see by this male chasing another male away from his female.
Male Canvasback Chasing Another Male Away From Female
There were a pair of northern shovelers too. The male is quite beautiful with his colorful feathers.
Close Up Male Northern Shoveler
Another Female Stretching Her Wings
Couple of Pairs Canvas Back Ducks Coot Swimming With Them
There were a flock of coots swimming around the pond then they came to rest at a little island formed close to the center of the pond.
Coots Resting on Island With Pair of Mallard Ducks and Shore Bird
Shore Bird Doing It's Ballet Moves
Couple of Gulls Resting on Island Ring Necked Duck Swims By
As we were coming to the end of the day the ducks were settling in for a rest. These canvas backs are resting right on the water, drifting along with their heads tucked in.
3 Canvas Back Ducks Resting on the Water Gull Swims By
These golden eyed ducks chose to rest on a log.
Golden Eye Ducks Resting on Log
That's it for now.
Bird images are for the #FeatheredFriends community hosted by @melinda010100
Big shout out to @ace108 for running the Beautiful Sunday tag every week supporting the accounts. Also to @c0ff33a for the Sublime Sunday tag for your random Sunday posts!
The photos were taken with my Canon PowerShot SX60 HS.
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Beautiful birds, very monochrome style
Such beautiful waterfowl photos! You do have an incredible selection of birds visiting you!
Nice place with ducks.
This must be so much fun to watch! If it were me, I'd be so busy watching I'd forget to take photos! :))
Waterfowl really are a different type of bird! Lovely photos @porters! The Egyptian geese recently returned to our homestead. They've been away the entire drought. With the return of the rain the last year, they are home. They love our lucerne (alfalfa) I can just never get close enough to take a photo, even with a zoom
Glad to hear the geese have returned to your homestead.
Is the drought over now? I never thought of how much that would affect the waterfowl.
We've had very wet years so areas that were marshy with low water levels are now lakes or ponds and are area is the traditional breeding grounds for many of the ducks and geese along with the songbirds.
Our summer are short here are very intense and everything breeds, reproduces and grows with intensity.
Hi @porters! So am I!! I think we can safely say; as of the recent months, the drought is officially over. Sadly there have been huge losses. Indigenous trees, much of the wild life and many family farms. But I am so grateful we are here. The last year has had a greater affect on us in the farming sense than the drought. We took a knock but were able to readjust. Last year my one business closed and this year the second (goat business) So it has been challenging
I'm happy you made it through the drought and are still there even though your businesses have closed.
One thing about having a homestead you can live a more self sufficient lifestyle and have the basics of food and shelter.
I'm ever so grateful to have our place in the forest, my retreat from all the craziness of the world!
Take care!
Home sweet homestead
Variety is the spice of life, your backyard with such lovely water birds enough to make one just sit and enjoy them all day long @porters thanks for informative post with most enjoyable photography.
Looks like a great day. That is one of the things I miss from living up north is the geese there were always so many of them.
We've had some really wet years as of late so there are lots of geese and ducks along with the song birds it's just buzzing with life up here!