By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Bird watchers, be on the lookout. With the arrival of more warm weather, a pair of bird species are making their reappearance across Kansas. Black-bellied whistling ducks are typically found in Texas and Louisiana, but the birds have made Ellinwood's Wolf Pond a temporary home over the last five or six years. Kansas Wetlands Education Center Director Curtis Wolf calls the ducks a peculiar sight.
"They're such a strange-looking duck," he said. "They look like little clowns. They're a large duck, about the size of the mallard, but they have these bright orange bills, these bright pink legs. They just look really odd."
Wolf said until about 10 years ago, sightings of the ducks were rare in Kansas. The birds enjoy perching on the rooftops of homes and build their nests in trees. Wolf said more than two dozen of the ducks will remain in Ellinwood throughout the summer, and a couple of pairs have successfully bred there in recent years.
The other bird that stands out from the rest is the Baltimore oriole. KWEC sells special feeders for the songbirds with the trademark orange and black feathers.
"They're not as much of a seed eater," Wolf said. "What they actually like are sugars, kind of like hummingbirds. They actually will eat the same sugar water you can use in a hummingbird feeder, but the popular thing to feed orioles is grape jelly."
There are actually two types of orioles that frequent Kansas. The Baltimore species has the brighter colors, and the orchard oriole has a more subdued, rust-orange color. Using sweets instead of seeds in a feeder may also draw in gray catbirds and thrashers.