RIng-Necked Duck

As I took a walk with my camera and big lens  around the reservoir in Central Park, a birdwatcher asked me if I had seen the Ring-Necked Duck.  Of course, I hadn’t.  I had never even heard of them.  He took me over to the edge of the water and pointed out two specks way out on the water.  He told me it was the 2nd one, the farther speck. I put my 600 mm lens on APS-C setting and tried to capture it and it appears that I did.  It isn’t the most interesting shot, but since I could barely see it, I feel fortunate to have captured it at all. 

This is heavily cropped but you can see all the visible features of this male who apparently dropped into the reservoir during migration.  There is the white ring on the bill, the peaked head and the white patch in front of the gray flank. The chestnut ring around its neck from which they get their name isn’t actually visible. The nineteenth century biologists that described the species used dead specimens. 

We are here in NYC for a couple of days to see our little granddaughter who is now 8 weeks old.  She is smiling and just starting to coo, and she is so delicious.  

I have loaded a couple of shots into the extras.  The first is a shot of examples of the water towers that are on top of all the buildings throughout the city.  An idea left over from another era, they are still constructed out of wood and steel today and still put on newer buildings to provide water pressure to their many tenants.  The second extra is a view from a very narrow spot on the north side of the Reservoir in Central Park at about 94th Street. Visible across the reservoir and through a gap in all the tall buildings of midtown, you can see the top of Freedom Tower, about 6 miles away. It would be so easy to miss.  Both of these were taken with the telephoto lens.