[EBB Sightings] Knox-Miller Regional Park, etc

Hi, all.
  I spent a little time out in Pt. Richmond this
evening as the sun was going down. It was pretty, but
the dying light made identification a bit more
challenging than it already would have been for me.
What did id were:
  American wigeons--quite a number of them;
  a few buffleheads;
  a female merganser--red breasted, I think, but
possibly a common;
  lots of coots;
  a great blue heron;
  the usual Canada geese and mallards; 
  a couple of what I think were greater white-fronted
geese (I was a bit confused about these because,
though I recollect their markings as fitting with
white-fronteds, they had bulbous white areas above
their beaks, bigger than what Sibley shows. Is it
possible they were something else, some variation of a
domestic goose of some sort?); 
  a dark duck I couldn't identify (It pretty much had
the shape and stance of a mallard but was very dark,
almost black, and had a black beak. A mutant, perhaps?
or does someone have another idea?);
  white-crowned sparrows;
  a warbler I couldn't identify--nothing in the books
quite matches what I remember of it.
  I spent some time at Lake Merritt yesterday and some
of what I saw were:
  quite a few black-crowned night herons;
  a probable green heron;
  lots of goldeneyes of both types--the Barrow's
outnumbering the common;
  ruddy ducks;
  scaups, greater and lesser;
  canvasbacks;
  tons of double crested cormorants; 
  coots; 
  a number of fishing brown pelicans; 
  lots of gulls (the species of which I have a devil
of a time trying to distinguish); 
  a couple of exotic Egyptian geese (residents of the
nature center/refuge, I assume).
  Finally, a flicker briefly visited the maple tree
behind our place this morning. 
Happy hunting.
Alan Howe
Oakland


		
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