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Melanitta perspicillata
Two females are mostly brown in colour to dusty-black with white ear patch, lighter brown from black bill to eye & white patches on wing.
Feeding along the shoreline surf of the ocean.
Spotted on Sep 17, 2012
Submitted on Sep 26, 2012
2 Comments
Hello Ashley, thank you very much for the help on the ID (:
Hi Greg, I do not think these are bufflehead females. Buffleheads have a much larger cheek patch, and their body is not all brown like that. And like your description says, they should have a white wing patch and the birds in the photo do not. The bill is also much too large to be a bufflehead, and the slight white patch at the back of the bill leads me to think they are something else. I think this is either a white-winged scoter or a surf scoter, either females or first winter males. Hopefully someone else can confirm something.