Volunteer Justin Crom took a photo of an odd merganser on Saturday at South
Platte Park. Photo is posted at www.facebook.com/southplattepark. The
trailing bird is a typical common merganser, the lead one has a few oddities:
A long dark-colored tassel, black wing primaries(?) showing, and a
female/juvenile grey rump on an otherwise male-colored bird. I SUSPECT this is
a bird coming into male breeding plumage, but would have thought the
rust-colored head feathers and crest would molt off into the shorter iridescent
green head feathers rather than there being a stage with a long, yet dark
tassel shown here. Comparing to online images, pre-adult males typically seem
much more splotchy in their color change from gray to white. And is the black
of the wing showing just a factor of the long white tertials(?) seen on the 2nd
bird having not acheived sufficient length?
The birds were seen approximately a mile north of the Carson Nature Center in
Littleton, in the large river bend near the wildlife area trail at the Park's
north border but were not present when I went to look for them today. Many
mergansers are out on the south end of Cooley Lake visible from the mineral
sidewalk each morning and evening, but haven't spotted it there yet either.
Thanks!
Skot Latona
Littleton
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