The bird was too far to document by handheld phone-scoping. I tried. As luck would have it, I put my boat in the water early this year, and it happened to be located in this very same harbor. I hopped on the boat and tried to approach the scaup flocks, a process that turned out more difficult than I had hoped. The flocks were flighty. I've gotten close to ducks in this boat before, but it usually takes finesse. These flocks, though, were especially spooky.
I eventually refound the bird among the scattered Greater Scaup flocks and got as close as I could (which was not very close at all). Still, record photos were obtained.
did look rather black-backed at certain angles |
with Greater Scaup |
with Greater Scaup |
bottom right, as marked |
Separating scaup from each other can be difficult enough, so confidently assigning the scaup parent to species is a whole other level of difficulty. Comments are welcome, as always.
- Nick
Looks like possibly a Greater X Tufted, but I am no expert with hybrids (:
ReplyDeleteLooks like a tufted duck.
ReplyDelete