I thought I'd share some info about a place to look for the Green-winged Teal (Eurasian), especially if you are looking early in the morning.
I visited the Little Patuxent Oxbow Lake Nature Preserve this morning (around 9:30 a.m.) and easily found the Eurasian Teal. At that time of the morning, the temperature was still below freezing, the sky was blue, sun was shining, and there was no/little wind. Because the lake was still frozen, it was necessary only to scan the small open water areas. The lake is fed from
underground streams, and that's where the water is open. The ducks/geese
swim/feed in these areas keeping them open and making them larger. The sun
rising in the east, hits the west side of the lake first, that's where most of
the mallards and shoverlers were, so that's where I looked. I walked toward the southern most end of the lake (Eagle's Head Cove) to get a lake-level look
directly across to the SW corner (near the old beaver lodge) of the lake where
the ducks were concentrated. The Green-winged Teal (Eurasian) was swimming
amonst other Green-winged Teal, Mallards, Shoverlers, and Mallard/Black Duck
Hybrid. A bit later 6 Gadwall flew into/over the lake.
My other purpose for visiting Oxbow Lake this morning was to take pictures of the illegal stand someone has built on Anne Arundel County park land sometime since the lake flooded on 1/30/13 and receded to the low level it was today. Someone went to an awful lot of trouble: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/birdy26md/8462199781/"
title="20130210 Oxbow Lake Illegal Stand 02a by Birdy26MD, on Flickr"><img
src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8241/8462199781_806320ae12.jpg" alt="20130210
Oxbow Lake Illegal Stand 02a"></a>
This area proved to be a good place for capturing some pictures and video of the Teal. Hopefully, there will be some good identification shots from it.
If you do not have a copy of my Oxbow Lake map that identifies landmarks we use to orient us, just let me know and I'll be glad to send you one.
Good luck!
Marcy Stutzman
Russett, MD 20724
--
|
![http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8241/8462199781_806320ae12.jpg"](javascript:if(confirm('http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8241/8462199781_806320ae12.jpg"\n\nThis file was not retrieved, because it was filtered out by your project settings.\n\nWould you like to open it from the server?'))window.location='http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8241/8462199781_806320ae12.jpg"'){kind=link}