[Tweeters] Spinning Shoveler

[Rolan Nelson]

Cricket,
 
Pretty common feeding technique for shovelers.  They do it to stir up whatever is in the water.  It's a real treat to see them at Ft. Steilicoom Park this time of year; some circling in pairs, and some groups of 15 or more, looking for all the world like kids on a merry-go-round. Good observation.
 
-Rolan

Rolan Nelson
Fircrest, WA 
rnbuffle at yahoo.com

--- On Mon, 2/6/12, Cricket <birdnerd at inlandwireless.com> wrote:


From: Cricket <birdnerd at inlandwireless.com>
Subject: [Tweeters] Spinning Shoveler
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Date: Monday, February 6, 2012, 3:03 PM



Hi Tweeters, 

We stopped at Nisqually yesterday on the way home from Portland.  Really nice day with lots of birds.  

At the Nisqually River Overlook there was a female Northern Shoveler doing a Phalarope imitation, swimming around and around and dabbling at the surface (rather than tipping up to get to the bottom.) I stayed and watched for sometime.  After awhile she moved about a duck length away and began spinning again.   I have never seen or read about this behavior before.  Is this common?  I have seen Phalarope but thought they were the only species that did this trick. 

Puzzled in Cle Elum

Cricket Webb
birdnerd at inlandwireless.com    

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----


_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20120206/00708d7a/attachment.htm