[TN-Bird] Cherokee Dam weekend

As Dean mentioned in his posting from Sunday, I was at Cherokee Dam (Jefferson 
County) on both Saturday and Sunday.  Spent about 2 hours Saturday (3 to 5 pm) 
mostly at the Overlook.  I'm not sure I saw more waterfowl than we saw Sunday 
though there was a large raft of a few hundred American Coots and a pair of 
White-Winged Scoters several hundred feet from the Coots.  An adult male and 
one with two white spots on its face (so, a female or an immature?).  The male 
just had a little white visible near its eye.  They were alone together.  They 
weren't diving, just drifting/swimming around and eventually out of sight.  
I've never seen a scoter before but the shape of the head & bill and those two 
white spots on the one clinched it for me.  Other waterfowl Saturday included 
redheads, horned and pied billed grebes, and a common loon. Sunday I got there 
earlier, just a couple of minutes before Dean pulled up around 1 p.m  As he 
stated, I eventually went to Mossy Creek WMA where the only waterfowl were 
Mallards.  Driving down Bethel Church Road on my way there I stopped to scan a 
mixed flock of several hundred, if not thousand, black birds in a field. 
Scanned for about a minute from my car before they flew away.  All I detected 
in that brief period were lots of starlings and red-wings with some grackles 
and cowbirds mixed in.   Returning to the overlook at Cherokee Dam a little 
after 3 pm there were 3 Common Loons in very close proximity, just below the 
overlook.  Two slowly swam away but one remained and I got the most fantastic 
close-up looks.  I was thrilled.  I've got a thing about loons...probably the 
reason I drove to the dam in the first place after reading Dean's post from the 
previous week.  Haven't seen all that many and these were the closest under the 
best viewing conditions.  Worth the price of admission (a tank of gas).  In 
addition to the group of 11 redheads I found another one (a male) asleep in the 
midst of 29 American Coots.   Dean mentioned an errant decoy.  Well, I saw 
another one both Saturday and on my second trip to the overlook Sunday.  A 
whirling winged mechanical Mallard.  Weird. Carole Gobert, Knoxville, TN  
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