ML26311141

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

see photo: it looked to me like a male Red-breasted Merganser, but apparently not - " I came today without much hope, but wishing to try, looking for the female Red-breasted Merganser reported yesterday by Peter L. and Lew R. - I did NOT find it, or any merganser today: and I spent most of my time at Hatfield scanning waterfowl, 1.5 hours scanning waterfowl at second pond : NO mergansers: but I took lots of photos of waterfowl with my zoom camera, and going through my photos now, is apparently a poor photo [taken 6:08pm] of a male Red-breasted Merganser! I can't believe it! I am so surprised, I'm thinking I might be wrong, so I'll try to work this through: it certainly isn't either of the other mergansers, (no white buffle + dark bill like Hooded; and seems wrong for Common, overall too small, Common shouldn't be smaller than wigeon? and bill structure not Common? but also, yellow-orange-red eye instead of Common dark, and crazy hairdo unlike male Common), so if I am wrong it is because maybe the bill isn't as thin as it looks, maybe this is a deceptive skinny side view of a thick wide bill? - the bird in the photo is smaller than the wigeon, so what ducks are here today that are smaller than wigeon? teal - those have black bills; ruddy ducks - those have blah (dark) or blue bills; bufflehead - gray bills; the only ducks with even orange bills are mallard and shoveler females, and those should be larger, not to mention wrong plumage for that seen in photo ... so I think this really is looking good for Red-breasted Merganser ! (?)," but Tom: "Peter and I agree that it is a bad picture of a female Common Merganser." which I'll try to learn to see - one mistake I see I made, is what I was looking at as "eye" : the pale patch that looked like pale eye, is prob just the upward part of the bill, so making the bill thicker, different shape, than I thought : the actual eye is poss seen as a small dark bead above it

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

ISO

80

Focal length

215 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.5

Shutter speed

1/200 sec

Dimensions

472 pixels x 394 pixels

Original file size

82.19 KB