ML124885501

Age and sex

Immature Unknown sex - X

Observation details

Second county record. I was walking along between Cell 3 and the southern distribution channel when I saw a photographer focusing on some birds in the channel. I'd been keeping an eye out for a Greater Scaup reported by Debbie Segal the other day, and I wondered if he was taking pictures of that. He had moved on by the time I got there, but I scanned the water where he'd been looking, and there, at the head of a raft of coots, was a dull-looking duck that, after a moment's puzzlement, I recognized as a first-winter Surf Scoter. From breast to tail it was about the same length as the coots it was traveling with, but bulkier. Its body was dark gray all over. Its tail was cocked up. It had a slanting forehead that peaked above the eye and then slanted down to the back of the crown. The crown was black from the base of the bill to the back of the head, and the black extended low enough on the head to encompass the eye. The rest of the face was the same gray as the body, except for two white spots, one a horizontally-oriented white oval that touched the black crown below and behind the eye and the other a backwards-D-shaped spot that jammed against the base of the bill. The bill was long and slanting, with a deep base. It was gray but darkened toward the tip. The base of the bill was straight up and down, with no forward extension of feathering as with a White-winged Scoter. The bird mostly cruised along, occasionally feeding at the surface, but dived several times as well. It never extended its wings. I saw Emerson Graveley a quarter-mile away, so I fetched him and got him to take some pictures of it (embedded here - thanks, Emerson!). I tried calling several local birders, including Dotty Robbins, whom I showed it to, Ranger Danny Rohan (ditto), and Bob Carroll, who arrived with Becky Enneis as I was leaving.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D500

ISO

800

Focal length

600 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/16.0

Shutter speed

1/800 sec

Dimensions

2297 pixels x 2297 pixels

Original file size

1.4 MB