Hi All,

With all the back-and-forth on identification criteria for hen goldeneye 
that has appeared in MDOsprey last month I thought it would be of 
general interest to share this link to a New England birder's page.

http://www.keenbirding.com/Varia/goldeneyes_290107.html

 James P. Smith of Amherst, Massachusetts has photographed a 
yellow-billed hen Common Goldeneye swimming with a wintering hen 
Barrow's Goldeneye at Turners Falls on the Connecticut River near 
Greenfield, Massachusetts. The photographs not only show differences in 
bill and head shape, and coloration, but also the slight difference in 
bill color. Yellow-billed hen Common Goldeneyes have duller yellow bills 
tending to orange. The bills of most hen Barrow's are brighter 
orange-yellow, similar to the growth at the base of the bill of a drake 
Black Scoter. I have only seen one yellow-billed hen Common, in 
Burlington, Vermont back in the early 1980s; so they are quite rare, but 
not infrequent enough to discount when confronted with a yellow bill on 
a single hen goldeneye.

Good birding,

Walter Ellison

23460 Clarissa Rd
Chestertown, MD 21620

phone: 410-778-9568

e-mail: rossgull(AT)baybroadband.net

"Nothing is as easy as you would like it to be, and nothing is as hard 
as you might fear"