Sweetwater Wetlands is a marvelous birding hotspot that is right in the city of Tucson itself. In addition to hundreds of Northern Shovelers, we saw Pintails, Mallards, Wigeons, and plenty of other waterfowl. I thought that Tom got a great shot of the handsome Green-winged Teal shown above.
Of course, there were plenty of American Coots in residence. This is a rather funny shot of a coot that just crash landed in the water.
There were also a few Common Moorhen mixed in with the coots. I first saw a Common Moorhen in California a few months back, but since I never added it to my lifelist, seeing this one sort of counts as adding a lifelister!
The diminutive Ruddy Duck will always be one of my personal favorites.
We also saw Gadwalls and we even saw (but I failed to photograph) a Cinnamon Teal.
We were especially lucky to see a rare winter visitor to Sweetwater: a juvenile Snow Goose! We were on the lookout for the Snow Goose because my son told me it had been seen in the area, but I doubt I would have located him had I not seen him coming in for a landing. He settled into one of the rear ponds, so we couldn't get close enough for a very good shot. I got a good enough look to positively ID the little guy, but he wasn't in the mood to pose for pictures!
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