[ValleyNature] Canard ducks diversity & Wolfville shorebirds

[James W. Wolford]

OCT. 2, 2009 - At home today I heard songs from a purple finch  
(unseen near a feeder hidden by leaves now) and a song sparrow.   
Below and on the main feeders were 4 n. cardinals (an adult male, a  
juv. male, and 2 juv. females).

  In Canard Pond as I listened again to Maritime Noon (three cheers  
for CBC Radio!), there were oodles of surface-feeding ducks  
concentrated in the northeast corner of the visible pond: 50++ green- 
winged teals, 6+ Am. wigeons, 4 male n. pintails (either immatures or  
coming out of eclipse plumage?), 1 male gadwall, 1 male n. shoveler  
(again either immature or coming out of eclipse), and, of course,  
uncounted but common mallards and black ducks.

In the area, along Saxon St. and e. Canard Rd., I saw quite a few  
blooming Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosa).

I checked Wolfville Harbour 1.5 hours after high tide, just when Judy  
Tufts had just done the same thing.  My sightings, of course, were  
very similar to hers (all as usual along the rock-mud interface along  
the RR tracks): 16+ greater yellowlegs (all the ones I saw and heard  
were clearly greaters), 8+ semipalmated plovers, and 3 "peeps", which  
were 2 least sandpipers (one was hopping on one leg while foraging  
with a hanging injured second leg) and a single semipalmated  
sandpiper.  Normally we would partly use leg colour to distinguish  
the peeps, but on harbour intertidal mud all the shorebirds, even  
many of the yellowlegs, have dark legs!

Judy told me that Port Williams sewage ponds now apparently hold 6  
scaups?

Cheers from Jim in Wolfville

Jim (James W.) Wolford
91 Wickwire Ave.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
B4P 1W3

phone 902-542-9204
e-mail <jimwolford at eastlink.ca>

"In wildness is the preservation of the world" -- Henry David Thoreau
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