ML21422761
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
Media notes
A female-plumaged Long-tailed Duck photographed in flight by Curtis A. Marantz on the Salton Sea off the Whitewater River delta. This bird is presumably one of the three reported on 25 November by Julie Szabo and Charity Hagen.
Observation details
Shortly after we began scanning the birds on the water off the delta Mike spotted two of the three Long-tailed Ducks that had been reported here on 25 November by Julie Szabo and Charity Hagen. We then spent an extended period of time studying these birds, first as they swam on the water immediate to the south of our point, but then as they flew to the northwest and landed in the cove to the west of our position. Not too much later, after others arrived, we again saw one of these birds on the water at a much shorter distance but in rather harsh, backlit light. At least in the conditions under which we made our observations these two birds appeared to be identical. These were medium-sized ducks that were noticeably smaller than two White-winged Scoters that we saw in direct comparison. They also had short, stubby bills that tapered from a base of medium-depth for a duck to a blunt tip along a culmen that seemed to curved slightly upward. Also apparent was an oddly shaped head in which the forehead was relatively steep up to its rounded junction with the crown, from which the crown sloped gently backward to the nape and then more strongly downward along the neck to the upper back. The head seemed large in proportion to the body but the neck was short and inconspicuous. The body appeared to be plump but these birds also sat relatively low in the water. I was too far from these birds to note primary projection of the placement of the wingtips relative to the tail. I thought the tail was short, but I cannot now recall much about it. When the two birds flew, I noted rapid wingbeats on small to medium-sized ducks that had their neck outstretched and held maybe slightly downward. These birds were oddly patterned for ducks in that the plumage patterns were dominated by white but also with dark regions. As far as I could determine, the immediate forehead was white but the crown was dark apart from a paler, gray stripe that extended forward from the back but not quite reaching the white forehead (and as such, the gray was demarcated from the white by a dark band. The lores and the superciliary region were white, and thus sharply demarcating the dark cap. White also extended back under the eye before tapering as it reached the nape, which was white as I recall. Contrasting sharply with the mostly white face was a round to oval spot of black on the lower, rear part of the face, this possibly on the auriculars, but it seemed too low and too far back. The neck was white, which served to demarcate the black spot. My impression was that the breast was clouded with brown, but when I saw these birds in flight I thought the underparts were generally white. The upperparts were mostly dark, but they also had a somewhat uneven appearance that I suspect reflected paler regions in the scapulars, but I thought the wings were sooty-brown and quite uniform in their appearance. The bill generally appeared dark in somewhat backlit conditions, but I had a difficult time determining if it was uniformly dark or instead if it had a paler or even pinkish region on the upper mandible. The eyes were dark as far as I can determine, but given the distance at which we made our observations it was difficult to be sure. I never saw the legs or feet on either of these birds.
Technical information
- Model
- Canon EOS 7D Mark II
- Lens
- EF400mm f/5.6L USM
- ISO
- 500
- Focal length
- 400 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire, auto
- f-stop
- f/8.0
- Shutter speed
- 1/1600 sec
- Dimensions
- 805 pixels x 563 pixels
- Original file size
- 303.1 KB