Ruddy Ducks and Dark-eyed Junco

My wife and I took a short drive to Poor House Farm Park in western Berkeley County, West Virginia, yesterday afternoon just to break the monotony of what had been a cool and rainy day. On the 5-acre artificial pond, I was surprised to discover a little flock of four Ruddy Ducks. I don't have a whole lot of experience with ruddies, but they hold a special place in my memory. They were a life bird for me when, on a field trip to some wetlands in southeastern Michigan in the late 1960s, my college ornithology professor, George Wallace, pointed out a flock of them rafting far out on a large body of water, with little more than their cocked tails visible as a key to their identification.

Along with the ruddies, the pond held three white Domestic Geese, five semi-domesticate wild-type Mallards, and eight white Pekin-type Domestic Ducks.

Earlier in the afternoon, we had spotted a late-lingering Dark-eyed Junco in our Martinsburg neighborhood.