Ring-necked ducks

Myriam (Myr's Bytes)

I’ve seen a few of these at the Jericho Beach pond. My guesstimate is 4 males and 2 females. Until this week, the females were too far away, in bright light or in shadows, and all my photographs were fuzzy silhouettes. This week, I saw little miss ring-necked duck swim under the pond’s wooden bridge and I aimed my camera at the other side. My photos aren’t crisp-tastic, but with a wee point-and-shoot, I think I did pretty well.

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I have trouble remembering this duck’s name because the chestnut ring around the male’s black neck is barely visible. The white ring around the male and female’s bill, on the other hand, is quite remarkable. But it is a bit confusing to remember: ringed bill means Ring-necked duck. According to All About Birds, some nineteenth century biologists found the chestnut neck ring to be a distinguishing feature of a few dead specimens.

6 Comments

  2. Those are awesome! I wouldn’t have known they were taken with a point and shoot if you hadn’t told me. 🙂 We’ve always rolled our eyes at the name, too. Who names an animal after a feature that’s barely visible? LOL!

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    1. Thank you :-). I keep meaning to try a bigger, fancier camera but I really appreciate the lightness and ease of use of my tiny camera. One of these days I’ll learn about bokeh, focusing on a bird’s eye and not blowing out my whites… It really is too bad that they are not called ring-billed ducks. That name would actually be appropriate for the male and female. At the least odd name gives us something to roll our eyes at :-).

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