Birdwatching at Fernald Preserve

Sunday
We had a surprise when we turned up at church this morning ready to practice with the choir the anthem we have been practicing for several weeks, only to find we were doing a different anthem. Dan, our director, is very diligent in choosing music to go along with the sermon theme for the day, and our pastor was beginning a new sermon series today and Dan thought he had found the perfect anthem. Unfortunately he discovered last night that our pastor is in hospital for a few days, and so his father, who is a former pastor of the church was standing in for him, and the sermon series will begin next Sunday. So instead Dan had chosen an anthem the choir had done in September - unfortunately we were in Europe in September, so we hadn’t seen the anthem before! Fortunately it wasn’t too difficult, and of course the rest of the choir knew it, so we did OK! After lunch, we headed out into the icebox ( a high of 22F (-6C)) and drove over to Fernand Preserve, as I had seen from Cincinnati Birders posts on Facebook,that there was a lot of waterfowl there currently. We certainly weren’t disappointed - there were Mute Swans, Tundra Swans, Gadwalls, Brownheaded ducks, a couple of Buffleheads, amongst others - as well as the inevitable Canada Geese. We watched and photographed for a while, but started getting cold, so headed off for a walk. We had only been to Fernald once before, and hadn’t explored too far that time, so this was a new trail to us, and under the sun and blue skies and coated with snow it was quite scenic, though you did have to watch carefully where you were going, as often the dusting of loose snow was covering a sheet of ice underneath! We saw a few other birds amongst the trees, but none that I recognized or could photograph.
One year ago: Watchful eye