Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bufflehead: Photos and Migration Patterns

Bufflehead composite image by Robert Mortensen
Check out those iridescent shades! A whole rainbow practically in one little face.
My eBird records indicate that I have only seen Buffleheads on 40 occasions. I thought it would be more than that. The handsome male Bufflehead featured in the photographs above was recently observed at my lunch hour birding patch along the Jordan River in Salt Lake City. I saw 100+ Buffleheads once at Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park in Idaho back in Nov 2009 and I have seen them in pretty good numbers at Farmington Bay WMA here in Utah.

Being a wintering duck in the places I have lived, I was curious about its migration patterns. Below is an animated eBird sightings map I made.
gif maker online
Stream of consciousness as I watch and ponder the animation: 

Major migration movements occur in May and October, just like one might expect. Late fall and winter sightings in Hawaii are pretty cool to know. Not shown are some sightings in the UK too. Some Buffleheads make it all the way into Mexico during the North American winter. In June, they get very far north near the Arctic circle. The west coast appears to host Buffleheads year round. I still wonder how much the lack of eBirding in July-September affect the quality of the map, not too mention the less populated and the challenging logistics of birding in the extreme and vast north of this continent to collect data for eBird.

10 comments:

  1. I saw my first one in Wisconsin this past month. It was really cool.

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  2. I have seen them on 55 occasions with my highest count of 150 individuals in March 2010 at Presque Isle SP.I really enjoy looking at the animated maps that eBird has created.

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  3. I love buffleheads! You really captured the colors in that second photo!

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  4. I love the rainbow iridescence these ducks have, wonderful post Robert

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  5. Cool birds, one of the wintering ducks I have yet to see.

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  6. Robert, as I watched that animation I was wondering where all the birds went in June and July since there were so many more purple areas in the lower U.S the rest of the year. Well, duh! thanks for pointing out that there are only records if there are people there to record the sightings! No wonder the map goes almost blank when the birds are north!

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  7. Lovely shots you have here on the blog.

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  8. Thanks for the all the nice comments everyone!

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  9. Fantastic images! Such beautiful ducks. Their markings and colors are especially stunning. I've seen a few pretty Buffleheads during migration.

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  10. Great post, pictures & I love the map! We usually get a few Bufflehead here in KY during the winter. I finally saw my FOS a few days ago! They are beautiful birds!

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