Although I don't know of the TUFTED DUCK being seen Monday, I just got a Rare Bird Alert from Tim Lenz that it is among active REDHEADS near the piling cluster.
I apologize for the confusing last sentence of my earlier reply about Tufted Duck ID. It should read: There is just the one bird, and this is the THIRD winter that presumably the same individual has joined the many thousand Redheads here at the south end of Cayuga Lake. Also I answered mainly about field marks, and I realize that Carol was asking about tactics as well. I agree that looking carefully at the margins of a flock is a good plan for finding rarities in general and this bird in particular. When I saw it, it slept on the margin toward the shore on Sunday, on Saturday it fed on margins of the Redhead flock, and reports I saw of Sunday are of similar feeding on the margin as well. There are at least two possible explanations for this: First, the extreme gregariousness of the main species, Redheads, simply attracts them to each other more strongly than between a Redhead and anything else, so nothing else is as likely to work its way into the interior of the flock or stay there. Second, the chaos of diving birds is harder to keep track of or see except at the edges, particularly the near edge. Another interesting bird in the huge south Cayuga Lake Aythya flock is a BLONDE REDHEAD, which I assume is the same bird as seen among the Redheads last year. It is leucistic, streaky pale yellowish off-white all over, but has the same size shape and behavior as the other Redheads including gregariousness. It can give you a sense of how a single bird moves in such a flock. I tried to send out an email about it last night but it didn't seem to go through. I suspect there are filters somewhere which block subject lines including the term "blonde redhead." We'll see if this try is any more successful. --Dave Nutter -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
