Red-Breasted Merganser

As the weather warms up we are beginning to see birds of passage on their way north to their summer breeding grounds. Above are some birds I always like to see, a Red-Breasted Merganser drake and some females and juveniles of the species. Wikipedia touts this species as the fastest flying duck, clocked at 100 mph (160kph). No wonder his crest looks a little frazzled.

Red-breasted Mergansers

Above is a photo of a Red-breasted Merganser couple, the only one I've seen this year. As usual with ducks the male is the brightly patterned one. While I have not seen Red-breasted Mergansers earlier this year, there have been many Common Mergansers here and I've posted photos of them before. For comparison, a pair of males and a single female Common Merganser are pictured to the left. All of these birds were swimming around offshore from Clover Point on Sunday.

Springtime Visitor

I saw a small flock of these Red-breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator) recently from the West Bay Walkway. These are the cheetahs of the air since they hold the speed record for the fastest level flight of any bird - 160 km per hour (100 mph). They're also pretty fast swimmers on the surface of the water - every time I've seen them they've seen me first and quickly paddled themselves offshore. It seems they're probably heading north to nest since I've only seen them here in the spring.

Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator)

A few days ago I saw a Harlequin Duck very close to shore on my morning walk along the West Bay Walkway and cursed myself for not carrying my camera that day. Yesterday I took my camera with me in case he was still hanging around. No luck so I took some photos of what I thought was a Common Merganser swimming and diving some distance offshore. Once at home though and scrutinizing these photos carefully I realized that this bird was not a Common Merganser but something else. That white collar and rufous breast identify him as a male Red Breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator), a bird I've not identified (or seen) before. This serves as a good reminder to me that we often "see" what we expect to see, even when what we are looking at is something quite different.

The Red Breasted Merganser "...has been claimed to be the fastest bird in level flight, reaching speeds of 129 km/h (80 mph)..." according to Wikipedia. No wonder he's got that wind-blown hairstyle.