Common Merganser

Every time we tried waiting for these guys to approach closer something or someone came and scared them away. I'm hoping we can get back and get closer, sharper images of them before they fly off our radar. In the past we've only seen these Mergansers at this time of year along with Northern Shovelers, Cinnamon Teal and my favorites the Eared Grebes and Horned Grebes. Typically we've only seen them for 4-7 days before they move on. This winter has been particularly resistant to leave following a summer of very serious drought. The two combined weather issues have left many sloughs, ponds and lakes lower than normal and still frozen over, making them unavailable to migrating waterfowl. I'm not sure what will happen with the waterfowl we'd just started seeing in open areas of the river. As I type, we're in a serious snow storm/blizzard which will have yet another huge impact on our birds across the board: frozen/cracked eggs, farm fields covered once again in snow limiting food supplies (left overs from last year's corn and been crops), just to name a few problems. Typically when lakes, sloughs and ponds are still frozen over I have good luck finding large numbers of migrating waterfowl near areas of open river but the Eagles know this too and have been using these condensed areas as their hunting grounds leaving the birds extremely skittish and moving around constantly.