Birds of a Feather

I took the weekend off and it was just lovely. Not just because I wasn’t working, but because the weather decided to play Spring. I meandered off with my camera, intending to take photos of construction sites and I did that, too. But somehow I ended up down by the water again. 

I know. Big surprise.

This time, I wandered pretty far afield, further than I’ve gone in a while. Before I knew it, I found myself at the foot of Yonge Street, the longest street in the world (although something about the Wikipedia entry makes me think that another country has snagged the honours). There were ducks. Interesting ducks, quite different from the regular quackers . Not that I don’t love them, too, but as I may have mentioned before, I’m sort of getting into this birdwatching thing.

Everybody were just hanging out, including the guy in a kayak

The cast of characters were several longtailed ducks

and another one that I think was a female Merganser, although I’m not sure if she was Red-breasted or Common, although I’m leaning towards the former, because of the crest on her head. As an aside, I don’t think it’s nice to call such a beautiful bird common, but I wasn’t in charge of naming it.

The water was really quiet, rippling around the birds and depending on where I was in relation to the sun, the colours changed

Regardless of the particulars, both the longtailed duck and the Merganser are diving birds and I spent some time watching them hunt for food

They’d swim around and when they got going, they moved at a fair clip

and every now and again, they’d stick their head in the water to (I assume) look for fish

When they saw something (again, I assume) they’d get ready and dive down and stay for a long time, coming up pretty far from where they went down

I have no idea what this guy was doing

I had a great time watching them