Mystery Bird: Ring-necked Duck, Aythya collaris

tags: Ring-necked Duck, Aythya collaris, birds, bird ID quiz, mystery bird

Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.

Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:

Look at that tail! The elegant black-and-white patterning of this duck told us at first glance we were looking at a pochard, and there's really only one species in that group with such a long tail, often held cocked up. Just to be sure, let's move slowly forward. This bird's back is jet black, separated from the silvery of the sides by a lavish S-curve. The silver brightens towards the front, becoming a white wedge that reaches up almost to divide the black of the breast from the black of the back.

The head is purplish-black, but far more eloquent than its color is its shape: a nearly vertical nape, a puffy crest, and a very steep forehead, with a definite stop between head and bill. And the bill is silver, with a fine white border at the base, neat white outlining surrounding the nostrils, a broad white subterminal band, and a wide black nail. It all adds up to a Ring-necked Duck.

That eponymous neck ring is visible only when the bird stretches its neck, showing a band of plush brown feathers that in the right light contrast nicely with the head and breast; beginning birders always complain that the bird should be called "ring-billed," but they forget that the name (a translation of the scientific epithet, collaris) comes from inspection of a bird on its back on a table, a position showing the neck ring to full advantage but leaving the strikingly marked bill unseen.

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