Bird Snaps: Birding and Photography: February 2021

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Hybrid Ducks

This winter, I decided that I would put some extra effort into seeing and photographing hybrid ducks. The west end of Lake Ontario, including Hamilton Harbour, is a haven for winter ducks, so there are normally a few hybrids hanging around. I'm not sure if this was a particularly good year for hybrids showing themselves in common birding spots, but I managed to see a few, and some that are less common than others.

Redhead x Ring-necked Duck (02-Jan-2021)

My favourite of this winter's hybrids was a Redhead x Ring-necked Duck. One had been spotted by a couple of good birders at LaSalle Marina, so I went looking for it. After striking out a couple of times to find this bird, I had some extraordinarily good luck on the third time trying to find it. It was a very calm morning and a small raft of Redheads was sleeping quite close to shore right in front of one of my favourite spots for photographing ducks. After looking closely at each sleeping Redhead, I eventually came across one whose head was closer to purple-brown than the usual bold cinnamon-red of a Redhead.

Hybrid REDH x RNDU sleeping with Redheads.
Note the difference in head colour and plumage.

REDH x RNDU keeping an eye on me while it tries to sleep.

It slept for almost the entire hour and a half I watched it, expect for about 30 seconds when I raised its head. As you can imagine, I snapped away like a madman when this happened!

Redhead x Ring-necked Duck hybrid: That is one gorgeous duck!

Redhead x Canvasback (31-Dec-2020)

Scoring a close second in terms of my favourite looking hybrids this winter is this Redhead x Canvasback hybrid. Joanne Redwood has been reporting this duck for a couple of weeks by the time I actually found it. After many failed trips to LaSalle looking for it, I was walking along the shoreline path when I spotted a small group of 6 Canvasback ducks up ahead. I didn't have a great view of them through bushes and branches, but something made we look closely at them. I quietly walked out onto the rocks and positioned myself for when the ducks might swim right in front of me. As I waited, I was able to confirm that the REDHxCANV was indeed in the group that was swimming my way.

A lot of the markings on this duck make it look like a Redhead, until you notice the slope and size of the bill and that deep orange eye.

Redhead x Canvasback Hybird

Redhead x Canvasback Hybird with female Canvasback in front for comparison.

Redhead x Canvasback Hybird

Brewer's Duck: Mallard x Gadwall Hybrid (10-Jan-2021)

I've been waiting to see a Brewer's Duck! I thought I had one last winter, but it turned into a Mallard x American Black Duck hybrid. We didn't have the closest view of this hybrid duck, but I was happy to see it and get some record shots.

Brewer's Duck (Mallard x Gadwall hybrid)

Brewer's Duck (Mallard x Gadwall hybrid) with Canada Goose

Mallard x American Black Duck Hybrid (02-Jan-2021)

Mallard's seem to be very indiscriminate in their mating habits! Mallard x Black Duck hybrids are not exactly rare, but they're still interesting to see.

Mallard x American Black Duck hybrid

Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser Hybrid (20-Dec-2020)
Perhaps the most interesting hybrid I've seen this winter was this Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser. I didn't get particularly close views if this bird, but I dd manage a couple of record shots. I'll be on the look-out for better photos of this kind of hybrid in the future.

Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser hybrid

Blue Bills without Blue Bills ... yet

Birding opportunities are infrequent these days. In addition to my job being very busy, Ontario's in a COVID lockdown. Needless to say, my looks at birds have been mainly limited to my backyard feeder. But I did have a one-hour visit at LaSalle Marina one morning in early February, just as we were finally starting to get cold winter temperatures. (December and January were very mild this year.) There are usually a few open patches of water at LaSalle in winter, and I was hoping there would be the morning I went looking for Ruddy Ducks.

I went to one of my usual spots at LaSalle and, sure enough, there was an open patch of water right along the shoreline. Unfortunately, there were only a few Mallards and Common Goldeneyes swimming in it. As I walked closer, though, a flurry of duck noise erupted as a flock of Ruddy Ducks launched from a spot I couldn't see further down the shoreline. I watched the flock fly around in circles as they looked for an open-water landing zone, hoping they'd find the patch right in front of me. After a few swirls around the area, they started coming down lower and aiming for my patch of water. As I carefully and quietly climbed over some rocks to position myself lower and closer, they started landing. Too bad I wasn't already in position or else I would have tried for some landing shots.

For the next hour, I had a flock of between 30 and 40 Ruddy Ducks in a relatively small space right along the shoreline. It didn't take too long for them to become comfortable with me sitting quietly on a (very cold) rock only 20 or 30 feet away from them. The lighting was not what I'd call awesome, with there being a mix of cool shade and harsh bright sun. But I'd never had Ruddy Ducks so close before, so I took advantage of the situation and fired off lots of photos.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this experience was seeing drakes in various stages of transition into breeding plumage. Yes, it would have fantastic if they were in their full, blue-billed breeding plumages, but I'm happy to photograph birds in all of their plumages. Here are some of the photos from that day:

Searching for Open Water: