I love watching the black and white Buffleheads as they swim about and dive for food at Rock Harbor during the winter months. They get pretty spooked when you get near them and tend to fly away. (Click on blog link to see other photos.) But if you stand up on the dock at Rock Harbor, you are far enough away so they don’t even notice you.
Buffleheads are small diving ducks, mostly white with a glossy black head and back. Its head has a large white patch behind its eye. The female has a dark brown head with an white oval patch on its ear.
Buffleheads are fascinating to watch as they continuously dive for food. You can see them getting ready to dive in the 2nd photo. Just as you think you can get a decent photo of them, they are under water again!
We were at Rock Harbor yesterday photographing some of the seabirds that frequent the area. When I took this photograph, I thought it was a Bufflehead… until I enlarged it on by camera. Hmmm… it did not have the markings of a Bufflehead, and why was its eye golden when Buffleheads have black eyes?
Phil and I thought maybe it was a hybrid between a Bufflehead and a Golden Eye, but we didn’t know if birds could be hybrids. We were driving by The Bird Watcher’s General Store later in the afternoon, so I stopped in to ask Mike, the owner, what it was. I was sure that I had a new species! He said it was a hybrid and has been spotted at Rock Harbor for the past 3 winters. Mystery solved…
Pretty cool, don’t you think? Have you seen it at Rock Harbor?
