Sightings June 19 Nine Mile Point batture

Today I was in the Nine Mile Point area on errands, so I decided to take a peak from the River levee near the grain elevators.

The place was crazy with Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks.  I counted 670 (by fives).  There was one small cluster of a half dozen or so half-grown young, still downy gray. 

There was also a scattering of waders:  Great and Snowy Egrets on the water's edge, and a dozen or so Cattle Egrets sitting on the lowest rung of one of the huge metal towers.  Twenty or so White Ibis, including my first juvenile of the summer (solid brown neck and back, and upper wing surfaces).  A Black-necked Stilt was stalking amongst the ducks with its outrageously long legs.

Suprisingly, an alligator (~ 5 footer) was in the shallows- I have seen very few in the River before.

If you throw in the hundreds of Rock Pigeons swirling around the grain towers, and a smaller flock of a dozen or so Eurasian Collared-Doves, it was all-in-all a very birdy scene.

Peter

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