Avian Visitors to the Desert in January

I started the New Year with a new discovery in my birding adventure - a pair of male canvasbacks in Phoenix's Granada Park that have already spent at least a month there.  It turned out that regular January outings along all my neighborhood's lakes, ponds and canals guaranteed sightings of even more water fowl visiting the area this winter.  

Mallards, American wigeons and ring-necked ducks are frequent and plentiful seasonal migrants to the desert's waterways.  Their group counts seem to number in the dozens or even hundreds depending on the size of the body of the water.   But other visitors seem to come in pairs like the canvasbacks I saw at the beginning of the month or even as individuals like the lone wood duck I observed in a flowing canal last weekend.  

I was also excited to find a sort of harem of common mergansers - a single male with at least five females - on a Biltmore community lake.  At a second lake I saw a lone female hooded merganser.  And back at Granada Park I saw a male and a female northern shoveler along with a similar pair of northern pintails.  

The birds I saw in January are just a few of the water birds that migrate to the area for at least some time during the non-breeding winter season.  Other locations may have common goldeneyes, cinnamon teals or lesser scaups, just to name a few of the visiting ducks that interest me.  Alone or in a group, these far-traveling beauties help create a birding wonderland in the middle of our busy desert city.  

Pair of male canvasbacks, month-long residents at Phoenix's Granada Park.

Male canvasback displaying his wings, surrounded by ring-necked ducks, American wigeons and a domestic duck. 

Pair of northern shovelers.

Pair of northern shovelers.

Pair of northern pintails.  

Male northern pintail.

Male common merganser, my first encounter!

Female mergansers.

Male common merganser with five females.

Female hooded merganser.

For reference, a wood duck at Granada Park last year.