I went out to Capitol Lake this afternoon with my mom and we saw the swans, but neither of us was able to get a good enough look at them to see if they had yellow spots at the base of their bills (apparently we need a scope or better binoculars!) I noticed someone else identified them on this list as tundra swans - is there any other way besides seeing the presence/absence of the yellow spot to accurately identify them?

Aside from swans, I saw more Ring-necked ducks than I've ever seen together before - there must have been at least 50 of them, mixed with Scaup (I think lesser, but I need a lesson from a pro on how to tell the difference between greater and lesser Scaup!) and 100's of American wigeons - at least one Eurasian Wigeon was out there. I saw one Hooded Merganser (male), and at least 3 Canvasbacks. There may have been one more canvasback but I wasn't 100% sure that the 4th was a different bird - I saw the other 3 later.


Emily Stoll, Seattle WA (stollea at u.washington.edu)