Second Opening Day Foray

I had intended driving down Grassmere to the Firemen's Pond but forgot to make the turn and found myself on Park, and there in the park were these Canada Geese:

They turned their back on me as I positioned myself to get a shot that included all of them, but they were also worried about a man walking a dog along the path beyond them in this picture.

I proceeded on to the Firemen's Pond where the only birdlife were these three (Mallard) ducks a-ducking:

My next stop was the parking lot in central Wanamassa, next to the fire station. There was an event in progress at the first station so the lot was rather full, but I was able to park there and walk west along the south side of what I call the Duck Pond, actually a branch of Deal Lake that separates North and South Dittmar Drives. As I expected, there was where I found some Hooded Merganser ducks. I was lucky to get pictures of both a male and a female:

From there, I drove through Interlaken to the island that sits in Deal Lake with Allenhurst to the north, Interlaken to the west, and Asbury Park to the south. I was disappointed that there were no geese but there were as usual plenty gulls. I've previously had some trouble telling one kind of gull from another, but it is pretty clear that most of them were Laughing Ring-billed Gulls while the larger, darker ones were Black-tailed Gulls.

Then I spotted another bird that clearly wasn't a gull. It was some distance from me diving under the water and reappearing at intervals. I took two pictures of it, one from each side because it obligingly turned around. After getting home and looking in Sibley's, I was surprised at just how closely my first picture corresponded to Sibley's drawing of the Red-breasted Merganser.