Rafting Up With The Canvasbacks
They arrived and then they were gone, but at least for a few days this past week our community had an opportunity to watch a large raft of Canvasbacks feeding and resting just out beyond our Oyster Cove Osprey nest platform in Marshy Creek. With cloudy conditions the previous two days, it was good to come home late Thursday afternoon to partly sunny skies for better viewing.
Raft of male and female Canvasbacks.
More incoming Canvasbacks while the sun popped back behind a cloud.
The shape of the raft was ever-changing.
The raft got larger and larger as more and more continued to arrive.
That’s a lot of ducks!
In the next two photos, I’ve shown how the Canvasbacks would group up….
Canvasbacks grouping up as a team.
and then dive to the bottom to stir up plant-life to gobble up when they resurfaced.
Canvasbacks are underwater stirring up plant-life.
I think they were hanging around for the evening’s sunset. 🙂
Sunset February 12, 2015
At sunrise, I found they had stayed the night, further up in Marshy Creek.
And then just like that, they began to take flight.
Canvasbacks departing the raft.
I quickly looked for an Eagle for a possible scare, but didn’t see one. In seconds, all of the Canvasbacks were in the air and had turned, heading into the sunrise.
Departing into the sunrise
I guess it was time to move on! Unfortunately they were not close enough for a close-up capture of their real beauty so here’s one I took in February 2014 along our community’s riprap.
Male Canvasback
A visitor every year, we should see more Canvasbacks around Marshy Creek before they begin their migration back North in the next months.
