DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — In one of many memorable birding moments with Jason and Lynn, Jason was scoping the Gulf of Mexico when he started shouting, “Scoters! Scoters! Scoters!” Sure enough, a small party of Surf Scoters bobbed in the waves, ending a two-year quest for Jason and me. Later, as we searched a more populated section of beach for a reported booby, I suggested that we use the code name “sparrow” to avoid anyone shouting the bird’s proper name while pointing a powerful scope at tourists and revelers.

All of that to say … I had another “Scoters!” moment early this morning when four dark ducks flew over the dam in front of me at Joe Pool Lake. As I picked up the birds with binoculars, I could see that their secondaries were white, but I could not detect any other markings. The birds hit the water, and I scrambled for the scope thinking, “Well, they could be White-winged Scoters.”

And they were! I exclaimed out loud as when I found them in my scope. They were uniformly dark except for pale face patches and occasional glimpses of the white secondaries. I was glad I had the dam to myself that morning; I was so excited I had to celebrate out loud.

Shortly after landing, all four birds dove. I took advantage of their disappearance to notice the resident kestrel along the shoreline. When I looked back, the birds had resurfaced. Almost immediately, they took off together. They flew just a few inches above the water and kept going south until I could no longer discern the flashing of their wings against the vastness of the lake.

Scoters! I exclaimed again.

I wondered where they came from and where they are going. It’s possible they stopped at the far southern end of the lake somewhere, but I got the impression that they were headed straight for the Gulf.

The whole experience lasted less than five minutes from start to finish, prompting me to wonder how many rare birds are never discovered at all. Had I not been within a few yards of that spot at precisely the right time, nobody would ever have known that four White-winged Scoters visited Dallas today.

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