White-winged Crossbill and Yellow-billed Loon

Went up to Norman/OKC Saturday to look for the white-winged crossbill and yellow-billed loon. We got to the house at Norman where the crossbill was reported and saw it within about 5 minutes. I wanted better pictures so I stood outside the car and froze for nearly 30 minutes. I was putting up the camera when Lou Truex came up to the window to ask if we saw it. We didn't see it that time, but I had enough of the cold so we decided to leave for Lake Hefner and try for the loon.

We started at Prairie Dog Point but only saw coots, pie-billed grebes and ring-billed gulls. We then made our way to the damn. First scoped out a horned grebe, then a loon and some common mergansers (lifer). My mom talked to someone else and he felt certain we were seeing the yellow-billed loon (would be another lifer) based on the way it held its head. Scoping it at 60x I couldn't make anything out except for the fact it was a loon. We then slowly kept driving across the damn spotting more loons far out again. Then we had one fairly close, but I still don't know what kind it was. The guy we talked to earlier said he was wanting a good picture of a pacific loon and was photographing this bird so I'm assuming this one was a pacific (which would be another lifer).

We turned onto Old Lakeshore Dr. and spotted a bunch of hooded mergansers (lifer). Got a few decent pictures of those. For us they were the treat of the day at Hefner since we couldn't see the loons good enough.

We made a second pass around the lake, again starting at Prairie Dog point. We saw DC cormorants and a possible domesticated Mute Swan (won't count this on the life list since he was so friendly). Fed him a few raisins.


Bill