Today we are back at my favorite South Padre Island birding spot, the Bird Viewing and Nature Center. In case you have not been keeping track, this incredible site has been spinning the wheels on my bird counter as of late. May just have to get the can of WD 40 out and give the gears a drink to cool them off. Once again, we are getting hit with another blanket of snow here in the heartland. Considering we have been fairly dry this winter, we were due for a good covering. There is one benefit to the harsh conditions – more time for blogging!
Keeping with the Texas theme and for that matter the bird theme and well the +1 theme I present to you Elmo.
Okay, maybe not THE Elmo, but it does have a red fluffy head at least. Not very difficult to figure out this particular duck is called a … wait for it … yep, a Redhead. It would save me a lot of time digging into reference books if all the birds could be named after their key feature. While taking the pictures it occurred to me that something might be wrong with this particular Redhead. The Wing was carried lower than I expected and looked a bit underdeveloped. Not being familiar with the Redhead, I tried to find some reference shots on Google – surprising how few pictures there are of this duck standing. Even Cornell was sans standing reference shots. Of the two I did find, their wings were folded neatly along their body.
Hit the jump to see more of the Redheads!
