These photos are from mid-January while we were having cold sunny weather, and also some ice on the river. The Common Goldeneye, in spite of its name (in English), is not very common just around here; but there is at least one of them keeping the mallards company again this winter. There often seems to be just one, although in spring/summer I have sometimes also seen a whole family of them. I’m not a skilled enough birdwatcher to determine if it’s the same one from year to year. I also don’t know how long they live. It may have been his father or grandfather I’ve come across before – who knows! Anyway, this one behaved much the same as I’ve noted when I’ve seen lonely goldeneyes in the river before; i.e. it seems to seek the company of the mallards not to feel all alone, but at the same time it keeps its distance. (A bit like myself in a crowd of strangers sometimes!)
Thursday, 4 February 2016
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Goldeneye Ducklings
I was happy to notice the other day that the Goldeneye population in the river is increasing :)
Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me (my excuse is that this was Wednesday morning after my early morning emergency visit to the dentist’s) but I managed to snap this with my mobile.
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
G for Goldeneye
They are found in the lakes and rivers of boreal forests across Canada and the northern United States, Scandinavia and northern Russia. They are migratory and most winter in protected coastal waters or open inland waters at more temperate latitudes. (Wikipedia)
We have one or a few of these in the river near where I live. When I first noticed them a few years ago there was a couple. Then the following year or two the drake was alone (usually hanging out with or near the mallards). Then he had a new mate, and they had little’uns – I think that was 2 summers ago. Last summer I just saw a lonely male again (assuming him to be the same one). But recently this winter, just a few weeks ago, I saw a whole little group of them (five or six) - possibly a family reunion… (I’m not sure of their social habits!) Yesterday however there was just this one on his own again, swimming back and forth across the river near the bridge I was walking on.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Of Birds and Windy Weather
When was it I came close to complaining it was getting too hot? A week and a half ago?? The last few days I’ve been back to wearing a winter jacket! On Saturday for the opening of the sculpture biennal I took a spring/summer jacket, but so wished I’d taken a warmer one instead! So the next day I took one of the winter jackets out again. (Actually all my winter coats/ jackets are still in a wardrobe in the flat and usually never get put away any further than that. But I had “put them away” in the sense of giving them a brush and going through the pockets etc, and hoping not to need them again for another four months or so…)
Walking home from the Supermarket on Sunday (with the warmer jacket on), I stopped for a while on the walkbridge over the river, put my groceries down, and watched the gulls playing in the wind. They certainly seemed to be enjoying it (the wind) even if I wasn’t…
You who live near windy coasts and other waters that attact gulls, will know what I mean. They wait for a hard gust of wind, throw themselves against it, flap their wings like crazy… Sometimes they get lucky and manage to take advantage of it for elegant loops. At other times the wind gets too strong for them and they just look ridiculous, flapping away but being blown backwards instead. But they take it all with a laugh!
But the gulls can be bullies too… This one kept bothering a family of goldeneyes:
The goldeneyes I’m really happy to see, because when I started watching ducks from this spot in the river, three or four years ago, there was one pair of them, male and female, among a flock of mallards; but then the female disappeared, and for two years I kept seeing the drake alone; still keeping close to, but also some distance from, the mallards. He looked lonely!
Now there is again a male and a female and I think I spotted some little ones too. It could be a different drake too of course, but in my imagination it is the same one who has found himself a new wife…
I’d still need an even better camera to spy on birds!
