How good are you at identifying a bird by its silhouette? When you are shooting directly into the light, one of the challenges of photographing a bird is that many of the details, or even all of them, disappear into the shadows—you often have to rely more on the shapes than the colors to identify the bird.
I could not see the eyes or any of the facial features of this bird that I spotted last Saturday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, but its long bill and distinctive “punk rock” head feathers made it relatively easy to identify it as a Male Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator), a type of diving duck that I see only occasionally. For the record, the white collar also helped in making the identification.
Red-breasted Mergansers are one of the bird species that spend their winters with us. I suspect that it will not be long before they depart for more more northern locations for the breeding season.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 