Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

Sea ducks. Bay ducks. Marsh ducks. So many kinds of ducks! For those of you that think ducks are those aquatic birds that swim around in ponds, eating bread, and gracing the pages of the Boston-based classic Make Way for Ducklings , you would be right about 1 out of 39 times (39 being the number of regularly occurring species in North America). The most common and easily recognized duck is the Mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) and generally speaking, is the one most people think of when they think of a duck. Mallards at Hager Pond in Marlboro, MA. However, as the title suggests, the waterfowl family isn't simply one species. The birds I want to talk about today are some of the toughest, roughest, and even, dare I say it, attractive ducks in the Anatidae family! The name "sea duck" originates in several older documents including the earlier versions of Roger Tory Peterson's field guides and refers to their preferred winter habitat of coastlines, harbors, and the o...

There are both Glaucous and Iceland Gulls in this picture, but which is which? Can you tell the difference? After spending my birthday weekend birding with Alison, we decided to to hit up Jodrey Fish Pier in Gloucester in order to locate the Thick-billed Murre ( Uria lomvia ) that had been spotted in recent days. We came up short on that front, but came across a fairly uncommon winter sight. This lead not only to seeing both our first Glaucous Gulls ( Larus hyperboreus ), but also how they differed plumage-wise, from the nearby Iceland Gulls ( L. glaucoides ). After snapping a few pictures, I was initially at a loss to try and identify them. Since I'm newish to gull ID (my favorite plumage is that of a Ring-billed Gull ( L. delawarensis ) in its 1st winter plumage), I looked through my preferred guides and came up with a diagnosis. After browsing through the basic guides provided by Kaufman (least helpful) and National Geographic: Eastern Region (somewhat helpful), I con...