I wasn’t at all sure what kind of duck came in for a landing at Jordan Lake.
Got home and started investigating.
WooWee. I had photographed a female long-tailed duck.
It is rarely seen at Jordan Lake – it is a migratory bird that stays mostly on our coastline in the winter.
I am sorry the pictures are not the best: I hope to see the bird again and get a better shot to share.
BTW a great identification source is the bird app “Merlin” at the Cornell Ornithology site.   http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org

The trees across the lake erupted in noise and birds.
A flock of crows exploded from the trees.
In the middle of the crow crowd was a red-tailed hawk.
As you can see, the crow was quite direct in expressing his feelings.
The rest of the crow flock followed along, screaming encouragement to their cousin.
I never saw any feathers fly and the whole assemblage disappeared over the top of the trees.

doc ellen is NOT upside down
neither is the great blue heron way up the tree …
and the tree, well …
my friend and I were sitting under that tree
when the great blue heron flew in, landing directly above us
the bird proceeded to watch us down below as we looked up at him
I got to thinking that if the bird flew out I could get a neat slo mo video…