Mostly sunny, low 40s
and a bit breezy
There are “hot spots” for birders
and then there are “cool spots”.
Most of the time, as luck would have it, those “hot spots” seem to be
miles away. It often takes a day
or even spending a weekend or more to get to those locations where you know you
will get “good” birds….those you don’t see everyday.
The cool spots are very often
the locations that are near you and while they will produce birds, they are
often the same ole same ole birds…..House sparrows, Robins, Blue jays,
Grackles, Crows, and so on. But
lately, I’m beginning to realize that if you look hard and often enough, well,
you just never know.
There is a little lake not too far
from home called Roe Pond. I’ve
always considered it one of my “cool spots” for local birding. I know what I’m going to find….Mallards,
Canada geese, and more Mallards.
This past summer, however, I was fishing at the pond with two of my
grandsons. In the short amount of
time we spent catching crab bait, we spotted a Great blue heron flying over and
perching in a nearby tree and then found a Spotted sandpiper working the
shoreline near our location. Not
too shabby for an area I don’t consider worth any extra effort to bird, even if
it is 5 minutes from home. (Check the blog entry for August 16th, 2012)
Today, we were tied up doing
some volunteer work for our community group and had very little time to spend
looking for birds. It was getting late
in the day and Sharon suggested that we stop by Roe Pond just to see if there
was anything of interest. I
reluctantly agreed and we drove over to the park. At first, there was nothing but the default Mallards and
Canada geese. As I glanced around
with the naked eye, however, I noticed a much smaller bird swimming in amongst
the geese and mallards. My
first thought was “grebe”, but I hesitated to make the call because the bird
was distant and I had never, no never, seen a grebe on these waters
before. Sharon says, “Never say
never” and once again was right on.
With close inspection, it was in fact a little Pied-billed grebe. I worked my way around the pond until I
was closer to the bird and as the mallards came swimming over to see if I had
any handouts to offer, the grebe came in with them to give me several nice
photo-ops. 
And so, I guess that I just
better spend a little more time checking on the “non-productive” body of water
to see just what I’ve been missing.
Hey, you never know! There
might be some more pleasant surprises at Roe Pond in the future.
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