Female Ruddy Duck looking for some friends

We haven't been posting much recently. We were busy with our older daughter visiting us from California. The lake was frozen which cut down on the number of waterfowl we see. It's been gray and cloudy. Chris' heart grew two sizes and she put up two Christmas trees.

Anyway, Chris spotted a small duck two days back. At first, we thought it was a grebe, but when we got the binoculars, we saw it was a lone female ruddy duck. She was trying to hang out with other ducks but the mallards, ring-necked ducks, and Canade Geese snubbed her. At least our daughter got to see some of the fancy ducks, even if some were not on their best behavior.

Lesser Scaup

Mike spotted a white duck early this morning, found the binoculars and saw the male lesser scaup. (Actually, Mike woke Chris up who told him where the binocular were- he can't find anything himself.) He tried the new duck alert to get Chris out of bed, but it didn't really work and he had to go out in the rain himself to see it. He got some grainy pictures at dawn. Later in the day, when the rain stopped, Chris got much better photos and the female came by too.