I Didn't See The Falcated Duck, But A Trip To Potter Marsh Is Always A Good Idea

The ADN cover story today on the unusual* visit of a Falcated Duck to Potter Marsh was enough to get me in the car to go look.  A couple of years ago, the stray emperor goose that visited Loussac Library, stayed around long enough for me to see him.

So I thru a bike into the van - in case the small pullouts along the highway were full and I had to park a long ways off - and rode down.  But there was no trouble parking, and no Falcated Duck. (The link above has a picture.  It's a handsome bird.)

In fact it was very windy and the water was very choppy.

The most common birds were gulls.

And geese.  Though I also saw a grebe and some long pale necks with dark heads poking out of the grasses in the distance.

Way in the back I saw, through the binoculars, a couple of sandhill cranes land and disappear in the grasses.  Too far and too fleeting to get a picture.

And the background of the marsh, the greening hillside, was particularly beautiful in the binoculars.

Missing the falcated duck was a little disappointing, but I tried.  And yesterday I didn't even know the bird existed.  No reason to be upset, and I wasn't.  Sitting in the car, which bobbled in the wind at times, scanning the marsh with the binoculars was a great break all by itself.

*I used the word unusual because one report said first ever seen on the Alaska mainland.  But the ADN story says it more precisely - 'the first confirmed report of a falcated duck on mainland Alaska ever.'