This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the redhead.
In breeding plumage, the male redhead duck with his rounded cinnamon-colored head, steep forehead and yellow eye is fairly easy to recognize. His gray body is set off by a black tail and breast. The larger male canvasback shares a similar color scheme, but his back is much whiter and his forehead more sloped.
Females are trickier to confidently identify. With brown-colored bodies, they can resemble other female species, including ring-necked females. A fairly large blue-gray bill with a black tip and a plain face distinguishes redheads.
Redheads are diving ducks that primarily feed on submerged vegetation. They eat the seeds, rhizomes and tubers of a variety of aquatic plants, including pondweeds, wild celery, water lilies, grasses and wild rice. They will also eat invertebrates and fish eggs and in shallow water dabble for food by tipping end up.
These sociable, gregarious birds are referred to as rafting ducks, a term used to describe a group of ducks on the water floating closely together. Winter finds much of the redhead population along the Gulf of Mexico in flocks that number up to 60,000 birds.
In summer, redheads nest in stands of cattails and bulrushes in a range of habitats in the Great Plains and in the West. Some raise young in our area. Females are known to frequently practice brood parasitism when they lay eggs in each other’s nests or in the nests of other duck species. They sometimes lay eggs in a large communal dump nest which is not even incubated most of the time. This practice requires more research to understand.
Starting in November, the Pagosa Audubon chapter will conduct a series of evening bird identification classes in preparation for the Christmas Bird Count on Dec. 14. The first class will cover waterfowl identification.
For information on joining these fun classes and other events, visit www.weminucheaudubon.org and www.facebook.com/weminucheaudubon/.
