Peeps on the Pond

Wigeons Cluster in the Distant Pool

Wigeons Visit the Trenches

Powerful Dabblers

Flirty Male

Tails to the Morning Sun

Oops...I Don't Think She's Looking at His Display

Wigeons and Goose

Hungry for More Than Pond Plants

Standing still I cock my head like the dogs do to hear better.

Peep-peep-peep...it's the wigeons. Even before I read about the American wigeon on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's website, I decided that this Elmira Pond visitor sounded like a squeaky toy. And that is exactly how the experts describe the whistle of a wigeon.

I like to think of them as my "peeps."

Wigeons are among the first to arrive on Elmira Pond following the ice melt. Northern Idaho is their most southern border for breeding grounds. Author, Randall St. Germain who lives further north in Canada, has impressive close-up shots of Ducks on Ice on his blog, including American wigeons.

With a white stripe and green head patch, male wigeons are also wooing their ladies with tail wags, water hops and wing flapping. Among the whistling peeps I see water dances and splashes from the western side of the pond.

More skittish than the bold little buffleheads, wigeons cluster in a group and stay far across the pond. Just a few mornings ago I watched the entire group flap into flight, circling like a small feathered whirlwind. What looks like six or eight wigeons on the pond materializes into twice that number in the air.

An eagle gliding low over the valley spooked them into flight. Eagles hunt ducks. Soon the danger passed and wigeons returned to flutter and dabble in their favorite far pool.

One amorous and hungry wigeon couple is swimming up an old peat trench. If you look carefully at Elmira Pond, you can see several squared swaths dug out of the east shoreline where peat miners harvested the bog matter to sell. I don't know much about the process but I do know that it takes hundreds, even thousands of years to build up peat in a bog.

That speaks volumes of Elmira Pond's age.

Mining seemed minimal in former years, yet the swaths remain as trenches favored by the Canada goose couple. Of course, that pair is fearless--former hockey players--so they don't mind swimming and dabbling so close to the house. But I'm surprised to see a wigeon couple.

Up close the male's green head patch glistens with iridescence, the color of a mallard's. They dabble powerfully, almost diving straight down as they tip, tails to the morning sun. They bounce like a bobber with a fish on the line, going after aquatic plants with gusto. The male flutters his wings in between feeding, letting the female know that's he's interested in more than food.

Such is spring on the pond with peeps.

Knuckleheads

Pond Gets Busy

Tiny Ducks, Big Heads

Female Has a White Cheek

"Hey, Baby..."

Hooded Merganser and Bufflehead (Both Males)

Smallest Ducks on the Pond

Buffleheads bob on Elmira Pond.

The ice is gone and the ducks have returned. Blue Heron came back and I swooned, even writing him a poem. I never write poems. Call me unstable at the moment--I have bird fever. I'm pondering where to put up ladders to improve my view of the ducks and tromping all over the horse pastures with camera, binoculars, bird books and coffee.

I'm giddy and may need a straight-jacket by the end of the week if I keep this up.

Texting duck updates to my daughter, auto-correct changes "buffleheads" to "knuckleheads." At the moment, the latter might be appropriate. The buffleheads are acting foolish, like grown cowboys in a bar when a lone female sashays into the joint. Three male buffleheads and one little female just bellied up the pond.

It's like the ducks are grunting the universal phrase for, "Hey, Baby..."

Buffleheads are so named because they are a little duck with a great head like a buffalo. The males are the whitest duck you'll see on water, but they have a blackish-purple head with a large white patch extending from eyes to crown. The female is a blotchy dark gray duck with a white cheek patch.

She may not be hot by glamor standards, but she has these males acting like smitten knuckleheads.

In courtship, the males bob those big heads. They all swim near the female, head-bobbing like duck rappers. Their music is a loud chattering. They're divers, and one male keeps diving beneath the female like he's trying to see up her skirt. The males rear up on water, skittering half in flight, half running. They charge at her, at each other and even at the lone hooded merganser who's like, "Hey, I'm waiting for my own chick to show up. Back off."

What's even more outrageous than what's happening on the pond is my mania to watch it. I cross the horse pasture and prop my camera on the corner fence post. Standing next to a pile of deer poop, I shoot pictures like a paparazzi having discovered Madonna and three boyfriends on a secluded beach. I giggle (I do this a lot during bird season) and click pictures of the knuckleheads on Elmira Pond.

Enjoy the peep show: