Mallards In The Hay

I’ve been doing the breeding bird atlas survey now for a couple of months, trying to head out to our assigned 5 square kilometer block of farmland just south of here at least once a week. It is turning out to be challenging to come up with confirmations of breeding activity, and so far I’ve only confirmed two species. The first is the ubiquitous red-winged blackbird, where several weeks back I saw a female carrying nesting materials near a wheat field. The second confirmation came yesterday, and wasn’t a species I ordinarily associated with the landscape of wheat and alfalfa fields. Mallards. I scared up a female in an irrigation ditch with a dozen ducklings in tow.

The kites we saw at the outset still haven’t definitively nested. They worried me because I didn’t see them in my visits the prior two weeks. Yesterday they were back, together with an interloper, a third adult.