A Beautiful fall day

             The weather forecast said that Friday would be a fabulous day. And that the 

      weekend would be cold and snowy. So the house chores could wait. I thought it 

      would be fun to find Mr. Mandarin duck again, so I headed down to do some 

      photographing. 

              I decided to go to my favorite place first and then go Prospect park where the 

      mandarin lives. 

              The first birds I saw were the buffleheads, male and female. How cute are they!

I love this pic because the yellowish water is actually the reflection of a nearby tree!

                                    


      I continued on and met up with the female wood duck. I've seen her most of the summer on the other side of the lake. She seems to be a loner as I never saw her with the other wood ducks. And all the wood ducks have headed south for the winter, so hopefully she will too.

        I continued walking and this cute sparrow begged me to photograph him....

     Yes, I love reflection photos. This is a northern shoveler. I got even a better one last year but this is pretty cool!

    The mallards are plentiful, so I hardly ever photograph them. The light was hitting this guy just right, so took the pic.

                        And I had to get this pic of a feather stuff on his beak

     I love the gadwalls, so had to take this pic too.

                    As I was photographing, a group of birds flew overhead and did some big 
                circles before landing. I wasn't sure who they were but got a few decent pics. 
                Turns out they were green winged teals. They may be seen in the summer but 
                most go a bit futher north. So it was nice to see them back for the winter.

                                              Here how the teals look on the water.

    As I watching the teals, I saw some movement in the water. A muskrat was swimming by....

                                     Then I saw a pair of lesser scaup hanging out!

       And finally a great blue heron flew by. They are not very graceful when the land.

     It felt like it was time to go to Prospect park to find Mr Mandarin. I was there 5 minutes and easily found him hanging out with his mallard girlfriend.

   

      He soon woke up and gave me some fun pics....

I'm not sure how long I observed Mr. Mandarin and his mallard friends. Probably about an hour. It was so much fun!

Finally it was nap time for Mr Mandarin, so I decided it was time to go home :)

As I was photographing this handsome guy, a woman told me more about this guy. Seems he lives about a 1/2 mile away with a person who has other exotic birds. But he likes to go exploring, hang out with the mallards and then he always goes home. Very cool that she allows him to do that :)

Enjoy!