Be A Better Birder: Duck and Waterfowl Identification

Be A Better Birder: Duck and Waterfowl Identification Lesson 1: Waterfowl ID Essentials Hi. Welcome to lesson one in waterfowl identification. I m Kevin McGowan and I d like to welcome you to the first lesson. We will be talking about the essentials of waterfowl ID. First, we will look at what waterfowl are, give you little introduction to them, and then we will be discussing the absolute key points that you need to identify waterfowl. Not everything, we ve got a number of other lessons that we will be going through, but these are the key points, the main things that you need to know to identify waterfowl. When you identify a bird, it doesn t matter what kind of bird it is, we recommend that you use as many keys to identification as possible. That includes size, shape, markings, color pattern, behavior, habitat, range, and calls. Waterfowl are no exception; we can use all of these bits of information to identify the waterfowl. But, some characteristics are more important for some groups of birds than others, and for waterfowl, by far the two most important things are shape and color pattern. Those are the things that we will be concentrating on in this lesson today. First off, let me say, this is my rule for beginners. If you re new at waterfowl, it can be overwhelming. I don t want you to be overwhelmed by lots of birds and lots of diversity. What I want you to do is think of these three rules: when you come across a flock of waterfowl, pick a bird, pick one. Identify one bird at a time. Everybody identifies one bird at a time. So don t worry about all the rest of them, just grab one and go for that one. Rule number two is there are too many birds in the world to recognize them all right off. So I recommend that you start by identifying your bird to a broad category, then narrowing it down to a smaller group. Don t try to guess one in 100. First narrow it down to the group of 30 then down to 10 and then down to one. And finally number three: always look for multiple clues. Since this is a rule three we will just say always look for at least three characteristics. Don t get fixated on a single thing. This bird is black and white. But what else does it have? It has white on the side. Anywhere else? If you think about these three tips, remember to try to look for three things. It helps to break birds down into smaller groups, into smaller categories. Once you can decide on a category, then you can concentrate on it instead of worrying about all the other birds in the

book. So for example waterfowl is a category. It s not hawks, not warblers; that s a start. You know you re looking at waterfowl, so you go and start looking at the waterfowl. So waterfowl can be divided down into seven basic categories to start. And these are the groups that I will be going through and thinking of these categories. Let s start off and talk a little bit about them. First do a quick introduction to the groups. We are going to go into detail in the later lessons, great detail with each of these groups, but for right now I would just like you to think about the groups themselves. First up are swans. There are two native species and one widely introduced species. The sexes look alike. They re big birds, they are huge, they have very long necks and are pretty much all white. The way to distinguish the birds is to look for color in the face and listen to their voice. But of course if they don t say anything, like the Mute Swan, that doesn t really help a lot. But, swans should be pretty well-known to most people. The next group up are the geese. We have six common species in North America and a couple more rare visitors. The sexes look alike. They are relatively large and big patterns of black and white. The next group up are the whistling-ducks. This is an odd group of tropical goose-like ducks. There are only two species that make it into the United States and their ranges are very restricted, to the southern boundaries. These guys, well, they look funky to me there. The sexes look alike. They are rather large birds but they have long legs for a duck, and kind of a big head for a duck, and a long neck. They also have broad rounded wings not pointy wings. Their legs trail along behind when the birds are flying. Next are the dabbling ducks. These are perhaps what you think of as the regular ducks. We have 11 common species in North America and a couple more occasional visitors. Males and females are dramatically different in color and pattern. These are the ones that feed on the surface of the water. They typically feed in shallow water and they often tip up or dabble with their rear ends in the air to feed. Next group up are the diving ducks. There are 16 common species and a couple rare visitors. Again males and females look pretty different. And these guys are found in large bodies of water, at times out in the ocean as well. They dive under water to feed, and that s a key to the relatively slow to take off in flight. This is actually big group, and there are several different subcategories that we will go through during the course. For right now, just think of them as the diving ducks. The one subgroup I do want to pull off are the mergansers, because these guys are pretty different. There are three species of merganser in North America, and one very rare vagrant. This subcategory of diving ducks is notable because, look at the bill, that is not a duck bill. These guys have long thin bills for catching fish. These are fish-eating ducks. Then we have another category, which is my category of not-ducks. Not everything that swims like a duck is a duck and it s important to distinguish among these things. Having this grab bag category is okay. I like a not-anything-else kind of category; I find those helpful. In this group

we re including loons, grebes, coots, gulls, and other swimming birds. But, we re not going to be talking a whole lot about these guys today. As we go through the weeks we will be talking more in depth in each of the following lessons. But it s always important to remember that some things look like ducks, act like ducks and aren t necessarily ducks, and the way to actually tell them is bill shape. Bill shape is key here. Okay now, there are other things that are ducks and are waterfowl but they are confusing because there are a lot of domesticated ducks and geese, and you will encounter these guys. They can be pretty confusing. There are a number different goose and duck breeds out there that have different colors and patterns that you not going to find in your book. Typically you find these guys in parks or in ponds where people feed them. That s a clue right there that you dealing with a domestic duck. Often these guys are fat. They have been bred for meat so they have a kind of a full diaper look at the rear end. They have heavy bodies. Often colorful legs and bills. They re usually friendly too; that again is a clue. And they often have white wingtips. Alright. So let s get into identifying waterfowl. Shape, let s start with shape. Shape is a very important clue for waterfowl ID. Waterfowl come in, well, it s a limited variety of shapes, they are somewhat variable and that can be very important for us. We are going to use silhouettes here to illustrate how they vary, so think in terms of the proportions of the head with the neck and the body. Shape is extremely useful in narrowing the waterfowl down into those subgroups. Start here with the walking birds. Although you don t often see ducks walking around on land, walking postures and the portions of these guys are distinctive. Whistling-ducks and the geese seem pretty at home on land with their feet well forward on the body. Look how the center of gravity is well over the legs. These guys are pretty good walkers. Dabbling ducks are better at swimming than walking. In fact we make fun of people for a walking like a duck, and the reason is their feet are further back on their body, which helps them swim, but isn t very good at helping them walk. Their center of gravity is a little bit of ahead of their feet so it makes a little bit awkward. Diving ducks go even more extreme. Their legs are way back on their body and they can barely walk on land at all. Again look where the center of mass is on this guy. It s again well forward of the feet. They have to stand up a little bit, to look almost like penguins when they walk, and that s because penguins are good swimmers too. Flying shape is important. Swans and geese, if you notice, have tiny little heads on very long necks. I made these illustrations approximately the same size, the same wing length. What we can see here is swans have really long necks and little bitty heads. Geese have pretty long necks and fairly small heads. Dabbling ducks have shorter necks and bigger heads, and then diving ducks even more so along those lines, with shorter necks and bigger heads. But, we most often see the waterfowl swimming, and we apply the same proportions here: long neck, small heads on the swans and geese, shorter necks and bigger heads on the ducks. Okay look at this group of dabbling ducks in the center, and what you can see is the head shape varies a little bit, but they all still look pretty much like ducks. They have that characteristic duck bill. When we go to the diving ducks, the bills and the head shapes vary quite a bit more. And so

there s a lot more variety of things to watch for among the diving ducks. Also note here the tails of the dabbling ducks, note that this pintail has his way up off the water, but the Mallard s is up off the water, and so is this Blue-winged Teal. But if you look at the diving ducks, they tend to have their tails down against the water, so they have a more sloping profile. This is not a foolproof characteristic, but it is something to watch for. Okay now we know these groups, let s see if you can figure out what these disassociated silhouettes are. I m going to give you little quiz here. The question is, what is this bird? It s either a swan, a goose, a dabbling duck, a diving duck, a merganser, or not a duck at all. I am going to give you a few seconds to think it over and then I will reveal the answer. And the answer is, it s a swan. This is a Mute Swan to be precise. It has a long neck and small head like all the swans, but notice that it s got a bit of a bump on the bill, and the tail is actually relatively long for a swan. Those are all Mute Swan characteristics. But, I won t hold you to that yet. Let s try another one. What s this bird? Is it a Swan, a goose, a dabbling duck, a diving duck, a merganser, or not a duck at all? Think it over for a minute. Not a minute; I m not giving you a minute, a couple of seconds. And here we can see this is a dabbling duck. It has that standard sort of duck face. This is a Northern Pintail to be precise; actually a female Northern Pintail. It has kind of a longish neck for a duck so that might ve been confusing, but it does have that big head and big duck bill. Did you notice that the tail is held up off the water? Right. Another one, one more. What is this bird? A swan, a goose, a dabbling duck, a diving duck, a merganser, or not a duck at all? Take a look. Check out its proportions. Do you have a guess? This is not a duck. This is an American Coot. It s shaped like a duck; it s basically the same proportions as the diving and the dabbling ducks. But that bill shape is just not a duckbill. That looks more like chicken bill than anything else. This is a not-duck. Very good. Shape is also very important for identifying female ducks. Males are typically colorful, but most female ducks are drab and brown. In fact the way I say is the best way to identify a female duck is to identify the bright male right beside her, the one that is next to her and has the same shape. Seriously, shape and association are the best ways to identify female ducks when you first get started. Let s take an example with these two species in which the males are similarly colored: Canvasback and Redhead. They both have red heads, they re dark on the ends, pale in the middle. But they are shaped very differently. Let s look just at the silhouettes and we can see the profile of these guys is very, verydifferent, with the Canvasback having this long, slow slope,

and the Redhead having a more rounded head with a more prominent forehead. This is what we would call stop in dogs or horses. So here s a quiz. Here s the female of one of these two ducks. She s not colored like them at all; so which one do you think it is? Is this a Canvasback or a Redhead? Look it over little bit and see what you think. Have you made your guess? It s a Redhead? This is actually fairly simple. Most people get this right. It s a female Redhead: very rounded head and not flat like the Canvasback at all. And here s a shot I am actually fairly proud of, that has both pairs of these, and the question is who goes with whom? The male Canvasback and the male Redhead are obvious. Can you tell which one is the female Canvasback? Is it the one in the front or the back? Who goes with whom? I hope you realize that the two in the front are the Redheads and the two in the back are the Canvasbacks. Note a very significant bill shape difference, but also look for other things, let s think about the rule of three here a second. Notice that the bill colors are kind of the same for the male and female Redheads and same for the Canvasbacks. And note that the Canvasback is brighter in each sex, a little paler than the Redhead. Alright, very good. Okay. Let s consider markings. Ducks have fantastic markings on their feathers; they are exquisitely patterned. They are really cool, but they re actually not much help in identification in the field. And let me give you an example. Look at this beautiful duck. What are the first five things that you notice about it? Take a second and look at it. In a rather informal survey of beginning birders, I found that most people noted the same things in exactly the same order: first of them was the white wing patch, then the intricately patterned chest and sides, then the long orange feathers, then the black rear end, and a black bill. All those things should make this a fairly easy identification shouldn t it? But, what if the duck was far away? Or if it was out of focus? It s a rainy day or foggy or whatever? Or if it was both far away and out of focus? What do you see then? You don t see the same things. Most of the time you see this this duck in the field the beautiful chest feathers and orange back feathers can t be seen. They re invisible. Then people tend to notice the white patch, if it s visible, but I have to tell you this duck does not always show this white patch. Then you re left with the basic overall gray body, a black rear end, and a paler head contrasting with the body. And those are the key characteristics for a Gadwall. So in some ways seeing a bird too well can actually confuse you. And one of the things I recommend people do is do a squint test with a bird when you first get acquainted with it, either in the book, or in a park or at the zoo. If you squint your eyes and get a bad look at the bird, what are the most distinctive things about it that you see? This was really the genius of the first Roger Tory Peterson field guides, that they illustrated birds way you actually saw them in the field and not up close, where these fancy feathers could confuse you.

Okay so instead of worrying about small markings, we actually use color pattern for most waterfowl ID, big patches of color and pattern. I have found that by far the most important thing to look for is the pattern of white. If there s white, that s a helpful clue. If you can see white on your bird, and you pay attention to where it is you can probably identify it. So, look at these guys, just a mass of ducks floating around. But they re all showing white, and so if you pay attention to where the white is on these birds, you can identify them. So where s the white? That s the key. And you want to see if the bird has white on these parts: on the head and neck, on the body, the tail, or the wings. Let s start with the tail. If a duck has an all-white tail, it s easy. There are only two species of ducks in North America that have white tails: the Northern Shoveler and the Mallard. White tail, you narrowed it down to these two. White on the head can come in a number of different ways. Let s look at these. They could be a big patch like on the male Bufflehead. It has this big white patch on the head. There can be a stripe, either a stripe like the Blue-winged Teals here on the face, or a stripe on the back of the head, coming up like this Northern Pintail. Some of the ducks can have spots, like this male goldeneye. Or even a crown like the American Wigeon here. Where is it on the body? Is it in the front like this Common Eider? Or in the middle like a scaup? Or towards the rear end, like an American Wigeon? And what s the shape of it? How extensive is it? Is it a just a little patch, like the Gadwall has? Is it a bigger stripe, like the Red-breasted Merganser? Was the middle of the body, the whole middle of the body white, like Lesser Scaup? Or was the whole body white, like on a Common Merganser? In the wing. If there s white in the wing, how does it extend? Is it a stripe going down the length of the wings like these Ring-necked Ducks? Or does it cut across, is it a small patch in the back, like the Common Goldeneye? And where in the wing is it? Is in the front, like the American Wigeon here? Is it on the back, like the White-winged Scoter? Or is it like this merganser here, this Common Merganser, and cut all the way across the wing? How about the wingtips? Here s a key for you: if the wingtips are white, your bird has to be a swan or a domestic waterfowl, a domestic duck or goose. Swans are essentially the only wild waterfowl in the world with white wingtips. There is only one species of goose in South America, the Kelp Goose, that has white wingtips, and that s only the male. So if it has white wingtips, and it s not some big, white, long-necked, small headed swan, then it s got to be a domestic goose or duck. Alright, if we look at the where these patches of white and color can be, feathers on the bird s wings are actually not, they don t cover it all, just like a furry dog or so. The feathers on the wings are arranged very precisely. You can see here how they re in rows, overlapping each other. And so you can expect to see white in this big patch of secondary coverts, or in the primary coverts. This beautiful picture of a Blue-winged Teal, taken by my son, really shows where these, where to expect to see these patches. And in fact, this little patch right here you have to watch. In ducks have a, this is a display area for ducks. Lots of ducks have color in the

secondaries, so it s worth knowing to watch for that. We actually give it a special name, it is called the speculum. Okay, so let s look at these two ducks. Where s the white? They look pretty similar. They both have white sides and black rear ends. But remember the rule of three. What else is there? Well in this case the backs are different. If we look at the guy on the left, the lesser Scaup, you can see the back is pale. But the Ring-necked duck has a black back. And it also has, you can t see it quite as well in this photo as you might, but there s a little white triangle, a little finger of white coming up the sides. The sides are actually gray, with this white finger coming up at the shoulder. Then of course there are the ring on the bill and all of that. Watch for those big patterns of black and white; where are they? Here are two commonly confused small ducks. Both of them, the males, have big white cheeks. But, what else? Where else is there white? Notice that the Bufflehead has a white chest and big flashy white sides, whereas the Hooded Merganser is white only in the front and not on the sides at all. Where s the white? Alright. Green, white, chestnut. The male Mallard and Northern Shoveler, they basically have the same color pallet, but what s the pattern? Where is that white? The shoveler has a white chest, not a reddish one like the Mallard. If we note white in the back, you ll see that the male shoveler has a big white square back there, whereas the male Mallard has just a thin line. So where the white is, is very important for identifying ducks, especially the male dabblers. Here are males of the nine most common dabbling ducks in North America. Very flashy, colorful, nicelooking birds. But if we just black them out and make them these sort-of silhouettes, they can be identified by just their white markings. If you know where the white is, you can identify most male ducks. Notice that the American Black Duck is actually standing in for two other species that are found in other places, the Cinnamon Teal, and the Mottled Duck. None of them show white on there, so I didn t bother to include them all. Okay so here s another test for you. using just these enhanced silhouettes can you identify this duck? Look at it for a while. Notice that it s got white. It s got white on the head, there s white back towards the back, and there s a little white peeking out here. Do you know which bird this is? It s an American Wigeon. The white marks I use most often in the field to identify the American wigeon is not the white on the head, which is probably the most distinctive thing, but it and it s great when you can see it, but the white in front of the black rump and the short white horizontal stripe on the side usually stand out more to me than does the white on the front of the head. In fact, the outline of that, if you can see just sort of in my silhouette here, you can lose the pale of the head to the background. But you always see that white square in front of the black rear end, and that small horizontal line combined with that square are the things that I see when I see an American wigeon in the field.

Let s try this again. Here s another guy with white, got a white chest, another white square in front of the black up there. Do you know what this guy is? It s also showing a white line up the back of the neck. This is a Northern Pintail. And of course you probably did notice the big, long tail that it has here, but often that long tail is hidden. And again it s the white marks that are not, perhaps, the things you think of most about this bird, that are the most apparent field marks. For me, I see a white chest and, especially if it has that line going up the back of the neck, that s what I see first when I pull a pintail out of a flock of birds. Looking at just the pattern of white can separate the diving ducks too. Although you ll notice there s some pattern repeats here: dark on the ends and light in the middle. But again the pattern of light alone is extremely useful for distinguishing the male diving ducks. Dabbling duck females, it s not quite so useful with the with the dabbling duck females. But there are a couple that show some, and so it s very useful, use it when you can. Notice that the tail of the Mallard is white or whitish, and there is a nice white throat and inverted comma around the eye on the Wood Duck, and then the white square in the wing of the Gadwall just like the male. If you could see these things use it. Diving duck females, again it s fairly important for these dull female diving ducks to look where the patches of white are. These are very good clues for distinguishing among the species of these dull looking diving ducks. And for geese, yeah, it s important for geese too. In fact, with geese it s about all you get. You don t get a lot of color; you get a lot of black and white. And notice that there s a lot of pattern in there, even with just restricting it to black and white. This works for flying ducks too, although often you only get glimpses. But here you can see in the mergansers, all of the mergansers have at least some white in the wings. And as they flash by, if you catch a little hint of white in the speculum on a long, thin bird, it s probably a merganser going by. Okay to end things, let s trying things a little bit closer to real life. I m not going to zoom in on these photos. This is the same photo I used a little bit ago. What can you see? I m going to work on this duck right here. And I m going to tell you that it s a dabbler, but that s all I m going to tell you. So let s look at that. And I ll put up the silhouettes here for you to look at. And let s take a minute to look at that duck and try to match it up. Remember these enhanced silhouettes are in the waterfowl ID foldout guides, which is a handy place to have them in your pocket when you go in the field. Have you made your decision? Do you know which one it is? This is a Mallard. Did you notice the white stripe in front of the black rear end? And could you tell that that s the tail, the white there is the tail? It gets harder but this is really, seriously the way we look at ducks and identify them from far off.

Alright. Last one. This little guy over in the corner and I ll tell you it s a diving duck. Do you know which diving duck this is? It s hard to see. It s little, but it can be done. And this is the way we do a lot of waterfowl counting, and a lot of waterfowl identification. Have you decided, do you know which one it is? It s a Ruddy Duck. Big white cheeks help distinguish this as male Ruddy. Even when it s in winter plumage and doesn t have bright red on the back, or the bright blue bill, but that big white cheek makes it a Ruddy Duck. Okay let's recap. Remember to identify one bird at a time. And think first about what group is it in. How is it shaped? That will help you figure out what group to put it into and then to narrow it down. Does it have white? If so, where? Where's the white? And then again what else do you notice? Always try to find at least three points of identification. So those are the essential things that you need to get you started identifying waterfowl. There's a lot more to tell, and through the lessons we will go through there s a lot more information to give you. But those are the key points. And this is a good place to start.