The Mystic on Sunday offered a mix of the old and the new. On the new side were blackbirds and grackles, here for several weeks already, as well as the more recently arrived cormorants and tree swallows. Representing the old, we still had a few winter birds hanging around: a couple flocks of coots, a solitary bufflehead, and these mergansers -- surely the last -- two hundred yards below the dam.
And then there was an odd diving duck I couldn't make out with my naked eye. You see it in the upper left of the photo above. I was astonished at how long it could stay underwater, and what a distance it could travel -- a hundred yards at a stroke.
It wasn't until I got home and looked at my pictures that I realized what it was:
Now, you can disparage my identification skills as much as you like, but in all justice, you have to admit that I had the phylum correct.
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