ML617058595
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Behaviors
- Flying
Observation details
Part of a continuing flock on northern Lake Mendota, scoped from Frautschi Pt. The flock was positioned in the same place as last week (S166729986), on average about 1.5 miles out (ranging 1-2 miles) towards Governor’s Island, spanning the entire northeastern horizon. Perfect visibility (glass calm water, no heat shimmer, elevated vantage point) allowed us to ID all birds to species with relative ease. Joye counted the pack in one scan left to right (north to east). Tallies (moving north to east): 360 in one group, 200 in one group, 4 scope frames x 100 birds, 24 frames x 150 birds, 20 frames x 100 birds, 14 frames x 50 birds, 15 frames x 50 birds, 9 frames x 100 birds - 8,910 in total, which we thought was a serious undercount. Our estimates per scope frame were conservative, and a boater flushed the easternmost part of the flock before we counted it, so there were likely a few thousand additional ducks not included in our sum. This count for Lesser Scaup is based on a 2:1 ratio of Lesser Scaup to Canvasback (5672:2836) from a total of 8,510 birds after accounting for the small numbers of other ducks (~400 between Gadwall, Redhead, Ring-necked Duck, American Wigeon, and Ruddy Duck) mixed in.
Technical information
- Model
- NIKON D500
- Lens
- 500.0 mm f/5.6
- ISO
- 1000
- Focal length
- 500 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/5.6
- Shutter speed
- 1/5000 sec
- Dimensions
- 2334 pixels x 1556 pixels
- Original file size
- 1.63 MB