Sweet Sweetwater Waterfowl

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!

Snow Goose!

Snow Goose! A LIFE-LISTER FOR ME! The photo quality is pretty horrible, but the lighting was poor and we were very far away from the goose.


Snow Geese breed in the arctic, and are rare in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, they are all too common elsewhere, and their population explosion in recent years threatens the very arctic lands they need in order to breed.


The Snow Goose with two friendly Canada Geese in Sudbury, MA. We were thrilled to see this beautiful bird. After seeing him, it seems all the more tragic that drastic methods such as allowing spring hunting of Snow Geese is necessary to keep the population in check.


They really are quite lovely. I wish I had better pictures so you could see for yourselves.


It seems strange to think that this one little white goose is such a problem - even more of a problem than the hundreds of Canada Geese blanketing the landscape. Very sad, in any case.