Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 16:39:48 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Arlene Ripley Subject: Re: Tufted Duck In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.20000215135203.0069d7e0@pop.iex.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 01:57 PM 2/15/00 , you wrote: >Greetings MD birders, > >The male Tufted Duck was present again in the Washington Channel at mid-day >today (15 Feb). The bird can be seen from Haines Point. Look across the >channel in a flock of (mostly) Lesser Scaup along the Fort McNair seawall . > >Ken >------ Ken, I'm not sure we are talking about the same bird, but I spent a good deal of time mid-morning until around noon at Haines Point scoping the scaup flock in Washington Channel. This is the flock which is along the Ft. McNair seawall. After carefully searching the flock, I found what I assumed was the Tufted Duck -- a dark-backed duck with reasonably white flanks. As I was watching it (it was sleeping with head tucked back at the time), Al Haury drove up and I showed him the bird. He too, thought it must be the Tufted Duck. As luck would have it, I have a military ID so can gain access to Ft. McNair. Since Al wanted to take photos, I offered to take him with me into the installation. We had no trouble finding the bird, still quite close to the seawall. We *wanted* to make it a Tufted Duck but other features began to rear their ugly head -- first no plume, second the flanks were not as white as some of the other scaups, the crown was not rounded but peaked, there was a white ring on the bill behind the black tip and a distinct band of white feathers behind the bill. The vertical wedge of white feathers separating the black chest from the flanks was also easily observed. In short, a nice specimen of a Ring-necked Duck. Needless to say we were very disappointed. I suspect that this is the bird being scoped from a distance from Haynes Point. There were no other male Ring-bills in this flock. I then proceeded to the marina south of National Airport for a quick check -- very few birds there and no Tufted Duck. I didn't have time to check the spots along the parkway south of the Wilson bridge. ////// Arlene Ripley | || Calvert County, MD | 0 || aripley@nestbox.com | || http://www.nestbox.com || ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================