Inland Buffelhead

Funny how things work out sometimes.

I had a chance to get my son to school and then head to work early. This meant I would be about an hour early. Not a bad thing in our business. Once I neared work, I check for my office keys and noticed they were not there. I was switching out cooler contents and left them at home. No one would be able to let me in until more than an hour as I am the first to arrive 95% of the time.

What to do? I remembered reading a post about some fun birds not terribly far away. I had over an hour to kill. Driving, it is! Mind you, I only glanced at directions to this spot and then decided I would never have time to visit there since my hours stretched from early light to zero light. I drove on on instinct. Fortunately, I remembered the street name and finally found it as I was about to give up. Then, as I rounded the curve, I spotted the bird I was after out of the corner of my eye. A male Bufflehead!



There are usually reports of Bufflehead along the coast of Florida during the Winter but I always miss seeing them. I had to go to the West coast to find my Lifers. Now, I have 3 in a tiny retention pond in Central Florida and not far from Disney!



The bird even did a little stretching so I could get and nice view of the wing pattern.



Along with the Bufflehead were about 35 Lesser Scaup and a few Hooded Mergansers.



Circling and diving for food was a pair of Forster's Terns.



Time to head to work. A little forgetfulness lead to a nice encounter with an infrequent visitor and really made my day get off to a wonderful start. Maybe I should forget my keys more often...