Redhead females regularly have irregular white spots on the head. They can have anything from a single small spot on one side of the nape to nearly the entire head white. And the whitish on the face behind the bill varies, too. In any given flock of more than a couple hundred Redheads, you can pretty much be guaranteed to find a few females with white on the head. There must be dozens of such females on the lake right now.
Here is an image I put together of the variation, mostly with photos from one flock on one day: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oSDiI9knzvWbmAqzpL9CN9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink. Best, Kevin From: bounce-118724508-3493...@list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-118724508-3493...@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Donna Lee Scott Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 3:18 PM To: Jay McGowan; CAYUGABIRDS-L Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Redhead female with white spots/flecks Today about 11:00 AM until ~1 PM on Cayuga Lake by Lansing Station Road (#s 535 to 700), Lansing, there were 3-4 small (ranging from 50-200 birds each) rafts (a few hundred feet apart) of Redheads moving back and forth, accompanied by 5 Tundra Swans, several Canada Geese, Mallards, and a pair of Hooded Mergs and a pair of Red Breasted Mergs. The Redheads swam quickly up and down near shore where it is somewhat shallow and dove now and then and came up with plant material in beaks. I soon saw what appeared to be a Redhead female variation that had a lot of white. I watched her quite a while but by the time I went back to house to get camera, she was no longer to be found. Her overall color was brownish, with the head and neck having rather regularly distributed flecks of white in the dark feathers over most of that part of the body. The head where it was not white flecks looked almost black-brown, quite dark. She had a small whitish patch on forehead where beak attaches. There was a medium-sized white patch at the base of the back of her head. There was an all-white, small (~1 inch square ?) patch on top of her left wing, about midway from the shoulder to the wing tip. There were 3 such white patches in the tail. When she flew, I was not able to see where these last 4 white patches were exactly. Her beak had the same kind of little band around it a short way back from bill tip as we see on Redheads, and the beak color was about like the photos of the female Redhead’s in my Audubon Bird App. Most the time she swam near the edge of one of the larger rafts, then sometimes she would be more by herself well away from the group, or swimming with only 4-5 Redheads. She did seem to be accompanying the groups tho. She flew a short distance with others when they took off (for no reason I could discern!). A few days ago one person posting here who had been watching all the Redheads by Stewart Park/Hogs Hole mentioned he saw a duck that looked like a Redhead/Wigeon cross. If this Lansing duck’s white patch in the middle of the face by the base of the beak joined with the somewhat larger patch at the base of the back of its head, it could resemble a Wigeon color pattern. But the two patches were not at all continuous. Just small flecks of white in between as on the rest of the head. Donna Scott Lansing, NY -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- 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/ --
