AMB Class #9: Everything's Just Ducky - Part 2

Since a few readers expressed an interest in some of the duck details that might be old hat for true master birders, and since I'm still trying to get this stuff down, let's start off with a review of what we covered in the Dabblers and Divers post, and maybe hit a few things I missed last time around.

• Mallards:  for males, there's no coordination between bill color and leg color (yellow bill, orange legs);  the females have it all right with matching legs and bill (all orange)
• American Wigeons:  blue bills!  Very distinctive when you know to look for it.  This is true for both males and females.
• Northern Pintails:  blue bills!  Wait!  Wasn't that supposed to be the wigeons?  Really, why not a few rules that stick!  But it's really hard to mix up a wigeon and a pintail...unless, maybe you have two females
• Gadwalls:  "white wall" = a bit of white speculum that shows up on the water's edge.  Except when it doesn't.
• Eurasian Wigeons:  okay, we didn't cover these birds in class, because they don't show up in Colorado, but here's a gratuitous photo of one of these cool birds that I saw - quite unexpectedly - on a rainy day last March in the vicinity of Point Reyes National Seashore in California.  Just like an American Wigeon - blue bill and all - except for the copper-colored head.

Eurasian Wigeon (male)
3/27/13
Point Reyes National Seashore, CA

Then, those Teals, how could I not include a few photos?  Skot tells us we are more likely to see the Teals in the spring, and my photo archive bears that out.

Blue-winged Teal (male)
4/20/12
Cherry Creek SP, CO
*notice the large bill.  Not quite as big as a shoveler, but clearly bigger than the wigeon.

Cinnamon Teal, with Blue-winged Teal
4/18/12
South Platte Park, CO
**notice the big bills on both of these guys

Green-winged Teal (female & 2 males)
4/19/13
Cherry Creek SP, CO

And the darling Ruddy Ducks:  

Ruddy Ducks
1/19/13
South Platte River, CO (north)
can you guess why they are called "stiff-tails"?

We covered all these ducks - dabblers and divers - in a fly-by session.  I thought it was time for a break.  Scot Latona thought otherwise, and moved on to geese.  Simple, right?  There are just those big honkin' things that are everywhere you look in city parks, right?

Well, duh.  If you're paying attention, nothing in birding is that simple. Check your assumptions and simplifications at the door, please, and follow along.

Yep, there are Canada Geese.  (And please, if you're around a birder, do *not* say "Canadian Geese".  There is, I think, no greater sin among the tried and true.  Well, maybe if you say "seagull" you can get yourself in more hot water, but just barely.)

But really, big-shot birders don't even talk about Canada Geese;  they say "White-cheeked Geese".  Really.  It's like a secret handshake.  I'll probably get thrown out of the club for telling you this.

But wait, I'm not really in the club.  So what the heck.

So, "White-cheeked Geese" are actually much more complex and nuanced than just a single species of Canada Goose.  What fun would that be?  There are Canada Geese, and there are Cackling Geese. Further, there are 7 subspecies of Canada Geese, and 5 subspecies of Cackling Geese.  But wait!  There's more!  These classifications keep morphing and evolving.  If you look at my Peterson guide, you essentially get Canada Geese.  If you look at the full-blown Sibley's, you get the whole shebang.

And "the whole shebang" keeps shifting, like the San Andreas Fault.  You just can't trust it.

So those geese you see in the park?  Could be one of the Canada complex, or one of the Cackling species.  The basic differences are size (Canada are larger, but you can get into trouble real fast if you think that's your key fieldmark, since there is considerable overlap), and bill size and shape (this is more reliable:  Cackling Geese have significantly smaller bills with a very different angle in the profile - much steeper forehead, and much straighter bill.  The Canada Goose bill, by comparison, looks more like a ski jump.)

Canada Goose and Cackling Goose
11/27/12
Green Valley Rec Center, CO

Snow Geese (both white and blue phases)
2/29/12
West Gothenburg WMA, NE

Then there are the light geese, and, of course, why should they be any easier?  There are Snow Geese, and, in keeping with the theme of *not* making it easy, there are Blue phase (really a morph, since once a blue Snow Goose, always a blue Snow Goose).  Western populations of Snow Geese tend to be white, and Eastern populations tend toward blue;  being at the convergence of the east and west, we tend to get both.  And then, of course, if you weren't already confused enough, there's the Ross's Goose.  Yeah.  That one.  The one that looks *way* too similar to the white morph Snow Goose for my taste.  The key difference in the Ross's Goose is that it has a smaller head than the Snow Goose, and no tomia.

Snow Goose (blue morph) with Cackling Geese
1/15/12
Denver City Park, CO

Huh?  "Tomia"?  That's birdspeak for a black smile patch.  When you see it, it's very apparent.  It makes the bird with the tomia (that would be the Snow Goose) kind of look like a wise guy. Or a kind of weirdo.

Ross's Goose
11/27/12
Lakewood, CO

But I like these birds!  Truly I do.  Even so, it was time for a much-needed, and too-short break.  Cuz, really, what else is there to cover?

Well, there's a bunch more stuff.  Holy Moses.  Who knew that there was so much waterfowl around?  And we've already covered a bunch of it with Doug Kibbe many weeks ago.  Yikes.

There are scoters.  Not huge in Colorado, but we get a few passing through, including Surf Scoters and Black Scoters and White-winged Scoters.

There are mergansers.  Hello!  We have tons of mergansers, only three species, but what cool birds.  There are Common Mergansers, and Hooded Mergansers (you will never forget a male Hoodie after you've seen one with his hood raised), and Red-breasted Mergansers (the birds that always look like they are having a bad hair day).

Common Merganser (female)
9/30/12
Chatfield SP, CO

Red-breasted Merganser
3/27/13
Point Reyes National Seashore, CA

Hooded Merganser
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Hooded Merganser (juvenile/immature)
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Hooded Merganser (female)
1/5/13
Wheat Ridge Greenbelt, CO

Finally, there are swans.  Oh my.  Such grand birds.  Mute Swans are increasing in numbers in the Midwest;  not native to North America.  (When I lived in England, in the late 1980s, friends told me that all of the swans - in this case, all Mute Swans - are the property of the Queen.  Apparently this is at least partially true, so if you're in London, don't go messing with the swans in any of the parks there.)  Tundra Swans are smaller, and have a yellow lore (or at least most of them do, although it's small and not always easy to see), and the larger Trumpeter Swans (these guys have an all black bill with a red tomia - remember the tomia from our Snow Goose above?).  Trumpeters crook their neck when they take off, and, if they're in a mixed flock along with Tundra Swans, the Trumpeters are the last to land.

Mute Swan
12/2/12
London's Regent Park, UK

Tundra Swans
3/2/13
Boulder, CO

Trumpeter Swans
7/31/11
Cordova, AK

Whew.  That was a lot of Anatidae Anatomy.  It's a pretty good thing that I didn't go with my impulse to skip this class.  Oh my.  I'm swimming (is that dabbling or diving?) with information overload, once again.