tags: Female Ring-necked Duck, Aythya collaris, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Female Ring-necked Duck, Aythya collaris, photographed in Hermann Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 16 November 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200 Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/350s f/1.0 iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A brown duck. A useful first step is to narrow the choices to divers and dabblers; since we can't really use behavior in a still image, let's look at the bird's overall plumage impression. Hen-plumaged dabblers are brown and intricately patterned, the body feathers complexly marked, while hen-plumaged divers (with the exception of the eiders and Masked Duck) come in large expanses of solid colors, chocolate and gray. This is obviously a diving duck, and the general pattern tells us that we're looking at a pochard.
Earlier analyses of Aythya ducks in this series have pointed out the usefulness of tail length. Our mystery bird has a noticeably long tail. With a tentative identification in mind, we now observe a blackish back with an S-curve separating it from the bird's browner sides. Head shape is also consistent with our first suspicion: the nape is tall, the head slightly crested, the forehead steeply sloped into a bluish bill with a pale band directly behind a wide black nail. The plain face is relieved only by a pale eyering with a hint of a white line curling off behind.
Am I alone in always thinking that Ring-necked Ducks are smiling at me?
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I'm going with adult female Redhead for this one, based on Sibley's "brownish-tawny overall" plumage, "round head", and that hint of pale gray secondaries (I think?) contrasting with the rest of the wing. The beak's colors look right, too.
The coloration, white eye-ring and black at end of beak: female redhead.