Northern Shoveler Ducks

One of the easiest ducks to recognize due to the extremely large (“spatulate”) bill and distinct set of colors: dark green head, white breast and rump, reddish flanks. To begin developing attentiveness to the shape of different ducks, start with female shovelers and find those shovel mouths.

Northern Pintail Duck

Males have long necks adorned with an elegant white stripe, as well as their namesake pintail. This might be the next dabbler to practice recognizing by shape alone: the long neck is usually perceptible on both sexes.

Green winged teal ducks

All of the previous dabblers were sizable birds, but green-wings are the smallest of all our ducks and are dwarfed by neighboring shovelers and the like. On males, look for the pretty red-brown head with green eye patch and vertical white spur on shoulder.

Cinnamon Teal Duck

Males are an unmistakable rich, dark cinnamon all over. Females can be a bit tricky, but they are bigger and bigger billed than green-winged teal, with a relatively plain face. It’s usually not an issue though: cinnamons are less common overall and they’ll often be in a pretty clear little group of males and females together. That is of course the most widely practiced method of female duck identification: identify the male next to it and call it whatever that bird is.

Wood Duck

Notes: Uncommon in our area, but unomittably glorious. Wood ducks breed regularly at Five Brooks Pond at Point Reyes and then pop up here and there in winter. As their name suggests, they like relatively woodsy, sheltered areas and in fact nest in tree cavities. This is the only one of our dabblers not in the fairly uniform genus Anas  (they’re an Aix).

Canvasback two ducks in water

Notes: Red heads and black breast, with back and flanks of canvas white. Pretty straightforward. Females echo the pattern more palely.

Ring-necked Ducks

Notes: Ring-necks are reminiscent of their relatives the scaups, but have a number of distinguishing features. The “ring-neck” is often utterly invisible in the field (see why I question those official bird-namers?), but they do also have a ring around the bill. In fact, they have two: one at the base and one at the tip. They also have gray flanks (darker than scaup), a black back (much darker than scaup), and a white spur around the shoulder.

Goldeneye three ducks in water

Notes: Ah, yes, the only duck to give a title to a James Bond movie. We actually have two goldeneyes, conventionally known as the common goldeneye and Barrow’s goldeneye, but Barrow’s are pretty scant, with a handful of them found at our local hotspot at the Bahia Lagoon among the few hundred commons that winter there. Both are distinctive, with dark heads punctuated by golden eyes and white face markings (a circle on commons, a crescent on Barrow’s), as well as a generally bold pattern of black and white. Females have brown heads and mostly gray backs. Goldeneyes arrive quite late, not really becoming numerous until December, but are well worth seeking out, particularly when they engage in their yoga-inspired courtship displays shown here.

Lake Michigan Triangle

Everyone’s heard of the Bermuda Triangle in the Caribbean, but on the mainland U.S. there is an even more mysterious aquatic polygon in Lake Michigan. The lore started in 1891 when a wooden ship hauling lumber and seven sailors disappeared without a trace — literally, not even a single piece of wood was ever found despite a thorough search.

Yonaguni Monument

Deep down in Japan’s southern island chain, near Taiwan, is Yonaguni. Island waters here are known among divers for their abundance of hammerhead sharks, but in 1987 one diver discovered something much cooler that still baffles scientists to this day.