I believe that Ryan and his girlfriend were the other couple there. I
waved them down and alerted them to the suspected RNG. I made the
assumption that if they didn't agree with our ID they would bring it up
with us, but we may have wandered off by then. I thought I remembered
seeing them walking away from the boat ramp area. But I may be
mistaken.
After an inquiry from the list about the possible dimorphic nature of
the RNG, I believe our ID may be incorrect. I remember seeing 4 of the
nine birds and assuming they were 2 mated pairs. The "females" were
much drabber than the "males". However, I don't see any information in
the big Sibley or Sibley's Eastern that shows a male being different
for a female RNG. My wife points out that we may have mistaken young
for females.
Can anyone confirm if the male and female RNG look the same? If they
do, I'm ready to believe that we were probably wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul Fischer
pfischer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
The Home Page - http://www.pfischer.com
The BLOG - http://www.livejournal.com/users/pafischer/
On Apr 28, 2005, at 8:27 PM, Ryan Burdge wrote:
I believe myself and my girlfriend are the "couple with 8x optics"
referred to in the previous posting but let me apologize if I am
mistaken. However, if we were, I want to say that in no way did we
confirm the sighting of 9 RED-NECKED GREBES. We were told that there
were RNG across the river and when we went to look it was simply to
poor of lighting to determine the species and frankly I don't think an
id could have been made w/o a good scope (they were way off in the
cove in front of the white barrel on the far shore, at 1 o'clock from
the ramp). From our observations our best guess would be cormorant,
which could have been mistaken with RNG in poor light conditons. Then
again, they could have been grebes and in the poor light I assumed
cormorant. I just don't want people getting excited thinking 4 people
confirmed sighting RNG when it was really 2 and 2 who do not agree. If
there were 2 couple prior to myself and my girlfriend just consider us
a 3rd couple who does not agr
ee with
RNG. As for the possible HARLEQUIN DUCK, we were not present from the
fly-by. If anyone does confirm the RNG, please post-that would be a
real treat!
Good birding-
Ryan
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