Monday, February 25, 2008

More birds at the Flamingo Hotel

For those of you who have seen my previous post you will notice that some of the birds were difficult to identfy. Here are two more "ducks" that I could not ID, but they were certainly photogenic.

And here is (I think) an immature Trumpeter Swan. I was standing on the "bridge" looking down at the swan.

This photo is showing one of the koi and a hooded merganser paddling away. This merganser was the toughest bird to capture. He paddled too darn fast for me to get a good shot of him. Oh well. Maybe another time I might get a better shot elsewhere.

Again, I was on the bridge looking down, and I took a shot of this unusual looking duck. Most likely not native to North America. This duck is also pictured in the first photo above.

OK, can someone tell me if this is a Redhead? This is the other bird/duck pictured in the first photo. It's just looking at it from a different angle.

And this is a Black Swan. Again, not native to North America? This swan came to the edge where there was a drop of about 2 feet. It was fun watching to see what the swan was going to do. It just slid on down without any concern, probably used to doing it several times a day. It was funny though to watch a couple of birds/ducks that stayed away from the drop. One of them was the hooded merganser.

5 comments:

Ruth said...

What a lovely place. I cannot help with you bird IDs. Hybrid and foreign ducks can be most difficult to ID. Still, it is nice to see them.

Mary C said...

Ruth and Ocean - thanks for stopping by. I hope I can get a few other birders to help with the IDs. But, if not, that's OK. I still had a really nice time in Las Vegas.

Kathie Brown said...

Mary, thanks for visitng my Blog. The swan is a mute swan, not a trumpeter. Only mute swans have that reddish-orange bill. The redheaded duck is not a redhead; their bills are gray, but according to Kaufman's Bird Guide it may be a Red-crested Pochard, native to Eurasia. The other duck looks like it may be a Mandarin duck, native to China. Looks like you had fun, regardless if you knew their names and that's what it's all about!

RuthieJ said...

Hi Mary,
Fun to see all those waterfowl in one place but frustrating when you don't know what they are. I'll agree with Kathie's IDs on all of them, but the Mandarin Duck was the only one I knew without looking it up.

Mel said...

Great pictures!
I love birds, but know so little about them that I started a blog to learn, so I KNOW the frustration of watching beautiful creatures and not knowing a thing about them! On the bright side... it's always exciting to learn something new ;)

 

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