Some Winter Birds

I was on the Cliff Walk yesterday and captured these two - a Song Sparrow chipping away at me on a Beach Rose branch, and a Red-breasted Merganser drake. There's a story on the drake (isn't there always a story with me?). The hen of the couple had come up from a dive with something in her beak that was really giving her a fight; I couldn't really tell what it was from that distance, but I took some pictures (they didn't come out very well with all her shaking her head around with the thing in her beak), but blowing a couple of them up showed me something that might have been a Sea Cucumber. In any case, the drake saw her thrashing around with the thing and came speeding up, although I don't think he was coming to save her; I stongly suspect he came intending to steal it from her. Why? Because by the time he got there she'd subdued it and eaten it, and when he saw that he drifted off again. Greedy bugger!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger