A friend of mine has a new visitor in his backyard, an Eastern Screech-owl has taken up residence in a Wood duck nest box in the middle of a pond behind his house.
While I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by for one more look at the Fork-tailed Flycatcher, In Stamford.
This bird is dazzling!
The day was warming nicely, I decided to head for the boat, although there was ice along the shoreline, and the boat, it would soon melt.
As I was cruising out the harbor, I saw a Common Loon diving in a deep hole just off the Shore and Country Club, as I drove over the hole I could see on the depth finder, the reason he was there.
The little speck just off bottom is a small school of Atlantic Herring, I marked a good number of them while going out the harbor, good Loon food, for sure.
Long-tail duck numbers are increasing, with an easy three hundred of these around the islands.
The water is extremely clear this autumn, I can clearly see bottom in ten feet of water, even over muddy areas.
I found these holes all over the bottom inside Cockenoe Is. bay. They look like tiny volcanoes.
I do believe these are Razor Clam beds.
The only shorebirds I saw today were a few dozen Dunlin scattered about, this one is coming in for a landing.
The White-winged Scoter population is now around one thousand, it was choppy out in the deeper water and difficult to get a good count, I'm sure there were many more.
Some of the other birds I counted were one hundred seventy Red-breasted Mergansers, eighty-five Bufflehead, three Great Cormorants, a few Greater Scaup, five hundred Brant, and one dark morph
Rough-legged hawk.
It was now past noon, so with a couple of scraps along the bottom with my clamming tongs, presto instant lunch on the half-shell!
Bufflehead are back in nice numbers inside the harbor.
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