In the Children's Zoo Wetlands exhibit, in the small amount of water unfrozen, a female goldeneye.


Male hooded merganser, female bufflehead, female goldeneye.

Hooded mergansers. One good thing about winter is the appearance of migratory ducks on our urban waterways.

Urban species #008: Hooded merganser Lophodytes cucullatus

Mergansers are a group of diving ducks characterized by a narrow, hooked, serrated-edged bill, and a crest that can be erected. The male hooded merganser's crest is especially distinctive. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, they are year-round residents in the northeast, but in Boston they are most conspicuous in winter, probably because freezing water concentrates them on urban rivers.

It is amusing to me that hooded mergansers are not among the 125 birds described in Birds of Boston, but northern pintails (much rarer, in my experience) are. Hooded mergansers are the only species of merganser found only on North America.

Photographs by cottonmanifesto

( male and female hooded mergansers )