Arrived home Friday night after 5 weeks in Florida in time to see the Ware
River peaceful and with shore to shore duck as far as the eye could see. Not
in rafts but drifting idly 1-5 feet apart.
During our time in FL, I was one of eight lucky enough to spend 6 hours
birding with Greg Miller (The Big Year). This unusual number of duck on the
Ware reminded me of the gentle scolding Greg gave me for using the lazy and
misleading X to enter my Florida sightings. I'm used to counting or
estimating in VA so it wasn't too hard to enter:
RUDDY DUCK 1000,
Osprey 2,
Bufflehead 25,
Scaup species 20,
Canvasback 12,
and one Redhead pair.
Then I looked at it in percentages and I finally understood why an X might
be misleading:
RUDDY DUCK 93.5%,
Osprey .001,
Bufflehead .023%,
Scaup species .019%,
Canvasback .01%,
Redhead .001%.
Had I entered them all as an X the Ruddy Duck value would have shrunk to
16.6%. I actually can't say exactly how many Ruddy Duck were out there but I
am confident that the greatest percentage were Ruddys.
Felicity Rask, Gloucester
