Veteran's Memorial Park 12/03/12

Took a drive out to the Boulder City with the sweetie to have some lunch and to check out the Veteran's Memorial park in the south part of town.  I'd heard of some good birding there and have seen some reports come through my email with sightings so I figured it might be a good place to spend an hour or so.  And I was right.  I added two more birds to my life list and got some pretty good shots.

My sweetie decided she was going to take some treats for the birds this time, having forgotten every time before this and so she promptly burned a couple bags of microwave popcorn.  And I do mean burned.  When we got to the park, there was already a gentleman feeding about a hundred mallards and coots and so Mila joined right in.  I guess the mallards are not quite as discerning as I am when it comes to scorched popcorn.  They ate it up.  Literally.

First, let's have a look at one of the birds that was already on my life list.  The Double-crested Cormorant.  There were four of them out in the upper lake, one female and three males.  The three males are just starting to show their crests.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... we heard you the first time!

LUNCH!  Didn't do her any good.
One of the males stole it about three seconds later.

The first new bird to add to my life list was this Common Goldeneye.  There were about half a dozen of them scattered across the lake.  Very nice looking duck and will make a great subject for a future painting.  Especially if I want to do an action shot!

Guess he didn't like having his picture
taken because he was beatin' "feet."

And the other bird to make my life list were these Ring-necked Ducks.  Had to be at least fifty of them around the place.  They were smarter than the Mallards because they didn't want to have anything to do with my sweetie's popcorn.

All-in-all I would say a very good day.