Northern Shoveler

To celebrate our 5th anniversary, we hopped on some bikes in Old Town Alexandria and made our way down the Mount Vernon Trail. It was a terrific day for biking and some reflection, and though I swore to myself that I wouldn't do any birding (aside from just generally appreciating the presence of birds all around us), I noticed something near Dyke Marsh that we just had to stop for.

As it turns out, the birds on the water were exactly what I thought they were: Northern Shovelers. I'd seen plenty of them in field guides (and in antique stores as decoys), but I'd never seen one, let alone 15, in real life. So, yep, another life bird for this still-fledging novice.