Today, I found the following highlights on my lunchtime walk:

Constitution Gardens:
Redheads (3 male and 1 female)
Ring-necked duck (1 male)
Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds in flocks
Killdeer flying around

Tidal Basin (completely iced over)
About 100 gulls on the ice, nothing that I couldn't ID as a Ring-billed,
Greater Black-backed or Herring.  Note that this is the situation that
in the past has produced concentrations of gulls.  Gizzard shad in the
Tidal Basin tend to die when the water is completely iced over, and the
gulls try to peck at the dead bodies through the ice.  I saw no evidence
of dead fish bellies from where I was, but there were a few gulls
pecking at the ice.  Anyone downtown in the next few days should take a
look at the Tidal Basin.

Hains Point (North end)
In the Potomac, which is clear of ice below the train bridge, there were
dozens of Lesser Scaup, and many more to the south along Hains Point.
In all these scaup, there should be something other than a Lesser, and
this deserves a closer look than I was able to give it.

Finally, a hunting Cooper's Hawk over the 14th St. bridge.

Good new/bad news:
   So nobody was interested in the robotic birdwatcher?  

Jim

Jim Felley
Smithsonian Institution