I took Joe's hint this afternoon and sandwiched a short circuit at the Fill
between dinner-foraging errands. This is only my second visit there after a
hiatus of years. And my improved but still limited ID skills (esp. with
waterfowl) lend a certain dicey quality to this. But I guess the learning
process is likely to be accelerated more by letting fly (so to speak) than holding
back.

I came away convinced that the half-dozen orange-legged geese trying to pass
for Canadian were almost certainly Greater White-fronts. There were at
least 5-10 lovely Northern Shovelers on the largest (central) pond. A largely
white duck that had been quite numerous when I visited a couple weeks ago was
scarce this time. The one I finally got a brief distant look at seemed to
most closely resemble the Common Goldeneye. Distinctive for appearing almost
all white at first viewing, with narrow black stripe down back.

I finally concluded that the duck with gorgeous cinnamony head with almost
iridescent green eye patch was a Green-winged Teal.

I turned back to ogle main pond again when a flock of 30 or more ducks came
winging in for a landing. I'm pretty sure that the most prevalent species
was none other than our latest pinup, the American Wigeon/Widgeon. Males had
dark eyepatch, dark tail, white patch at shoulder, and in my crude description
brown chest with white belly. Of course this ID may reflect indoctrination
from too much Tweeting recently.

I don't recall any Fill postings recently. Surely there are those out there
who can either bring me back to Earth or, better yet, affirm that Greater
WF, N Shovelers, GW Teal, and AW are all common if not even almost pedestrian
for this locale. That's fine by me, as in each case it is the first time I
have felt equipped to actually claim an official sighting. One GBH and
several Hooded Mergansers round out my visit list.

paul johanson
north beach (Seattle)