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Posted by Rock Jetty on 01:01:58 01/02/07
Okay, here it goes, hopefully I don't get burned for this. My last night here in NW Arkansas (not really eager to get back to 80-degree weather) and as I click on to the Birdboard, what do I see but a plethora of new postings since I last gave my two cents on the duck. Don't get me wrong, it would actually be fun to see the whole "Eared Grebe Fiasco" take place all over again, but I think we have a lot more fish to fry, excuse me, birds to see and talk about in this exciting new year and I would hate to see all our energies invested in this one individual...not that it doesn't deserve merit.
Facts so far:
It is a scaup, without question. It is a female scaup, hence the light area at the base of the bill. It is a young female scaup, hence the light area at the base of the bill being buffy instead of white. The next question is whether it is a Greater Scaup or a Lesser Scaup and this question arises because of a certain peculiarity about the duck's head shape in this ONE photo: it looks flat intead of elevated. Colin brought up an interesting point about the bill, but for now let's focus on the head. This is the only thing challenging birders right now, really. Not refraction, not cross-breeding. Let's not make matters more complex than what they really are. John is probably right, the bird came up from a dive, giving it the flattened head look (hey remember that grebe, with the flat-head look in that one photo and some people thought it was a Horned but it turned out to be an Eared, blah, blah, blah).
Paul-the-other, you kinda lost me in your reply to John Boyd, I'll attempt to elaborate on something that you questioned John about. Some of us who bird, actively seek out rarities among the common ones, especially in species that closely resemble each other (Lesser vs. Greater Scaup). We know, through experience, that Lesser Scaup are not rare in south FL (whether it'd be in Dade, Monroe or Collier County, these are imaginary boundaries but they help us in organizing data and are referred to often when describing species abundance, presence/absence, etc) but that Greater Scaup are.
Here's a hypothetical scenario:
Let's say a birder starts counting scaup in a given area for the first time, be it in a CBC or any other count. He scrutinizes each bird, something he should always do, but after years of ID'ing and counting and coming up with Lesser Scaup, he gets pretty confident that most, if not all, of the birds he is looking at are: Lesser Scaup. Lesser Scaup are sometimes found forming "rafts" of several hundred individuals and sometimes there are several of these rafts. If these birds are found in an area where, historically, every scaup that was scrutinize turned out to be Lesser Scaup, it would be safe to assume that all of the birds in those rafts are Lesser Scaup. New birders may scutinize every scaup, veteran birders may not want to thoroughly look over every individual. Could Greater Scaup be missed in this count? Sure, it's possible. Can we say with 95-99% confidence that most of the scaup in this count are Lesser? Sure, why not.
That said, this duck warrants further investigation. So either we wait for Paul-the-other to post his other photos, or we go check out the duck for ourselves, which is what I would do if I were in town.
Happy New Year,
RJ
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