{"id":9349,"date":"2022-01-11T21:33:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T04:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/?p=9349"},"modified":"2022-01-11T21:33:26","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T04:33:26","slug":"hooded-mergansers-south-platte-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/11\/hooded-mergansers-south-platte-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Hooded Mergansers, South Platte River"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This last Sunday, I headed down to Reynolds Landing to do some birding and maybe capture some images. Soon after arriving, I found several groups of Hooded Mergansers in the river. At this time of year, the sun was getting low in the sky, so the colors reflected in the water was spectacular. This was a fun group of mergansers that kept me occupied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0207-Hooded-Merganser-Group-Reynolds-Landing\"
Hooded Merganser Group, Reynolds Landing.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

These mergansers have crests or hoods. The females have brown plumage, as shown below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0059-Female-Hooded-Merganiser-Reynolds-Landing\"
Female Hooded Merganser, Reynolds Landing.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While observing the mergansers, they dip into the water looking for food. I was fortunate to see this female surface with a huge crawdad in her bill. What luck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0133-Female-Hooded-Merganser-With-Crawdad-No-1\"
Female Hooded Merganser, With Crawdad, No 1.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I made a few images of this bird. Here is another image. Yes, she did swallow the crawdad whole, but that was after I finished shooting a burst of images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0137-Female-Hooded-Merganser-With-Crawdad-No-2\"
Female Hooded Merganser, With Crawdad, No 2.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This little merganser must have got quite wet dipping into the water to catch that huge crawdad. In this image, she was exercising her wings to shake of the water. Probably also to show off to the other ducks too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0188-Female-Hooded-Merganser-Exercising-Wings\"
Female Hooded Merganser Exercising Wings.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I also managed to capture a male merganser exercising his wings too. Perhaps he is trying to attract the female who did a great job of catching the crawdad!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0219-Male-Hooded-Merganser-Exercising-Wings\"
Male Merganser Exercising Wings.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Later in the afternoon, I headed south near C-470. At this time, the sun was very low in the sky, about 30 minutes before sunset. Another female merganser made her way close to my location. The low sun was reflecting off the surface waves, lighting up her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2675-0293-Female-Hooded-Merganser-Catching-Reflections\"
Female Hooded Merganser, Catching Reflections.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That is all for the mergansers. The next post will have the remaining ducks that I encountered. It was really fun to see the mergansers catch their food and exercise their wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This last Sunday, I headed down to Reynolds Landing to do some birding and maybe capture some images. Soon after arriving, I found several groups of Hooded Mergansers in the river. At this time of year, the sun was getting low in the sky, so the colors reflected in the water was spectacular. This was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1721,1808,289,1810,1418,28,25,1020,27,1809],"class_list":{"0":"post-9349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"tag-crawdad","8":"tag-flapping","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-hooded","11":"tag-mergansers","12":"tag-reflections","13":"tag-river","14":"tag-south-platte","15":"tag-sunset","16":"tag-wings"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMatQ-2qN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9351,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9349\/revisions\/9351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}