Bird of the week - Goldeneye

This beautiful duck is a winter visitor from Scandinavia.  Several of them can be found on Killingworth Lake, about two miles from here.  They usually stay a bit out of reach of the camera in the middle of the water but the recent cold weather froze much of the lake and they were forced a bit closer.  These photos were taken between sleet showers so the light was pretty poor.  In good light the drake's head is a wonderful iridescent green.  Here he is black and white - with a golden eye.

As with most ducks, the female has more restrained colouring and she also has a paler eye.

Courtship begins in earnest when they get back to their breeding grounds but that didn't stop the males from displaying to the females by swimming alongside and stretching their necks

or throwing their heads back.

This female is unimpressed.

Goldeneyes are diving ducks, eating mostly insects and crustaceans.  We do see a few in Gosforth Park nature reserve, usually at the far side of the lake.  While I was watching them the goldeneyes occasionally took off and flew a couple of circuits around the lake before landing again.  They make a wonderful whistling sound as they fly.

Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) nest in holes in trees and will use nest boxes.  A few have been persuaded to nest in Scotland.

Most go back farther north (orange = breeding range, blue = wintering range).

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bucephala_clangula_map.svg

Thomas Bewick made this engraving for A History of British Birds.

Archibald Thorburn painted goldeneyes with scaups and smews,

and with tufted ducks.

John James Audubon made this painting for Birds of America.

The goldeneye is not to be confused with GoldenEye, the 17th James Bond film, released in 1995 and starring Pierce Brosnan as Bond.  Operation Goldeneye was a WW2 plan to thwart possible radar surveillance of the Straits of Gibraltar by the Axis powers in collaboration with fascist Spain, and was run by Commander Ian Fleming.  Fleming later named his Jamaican estate Goldeneye and wrote the early James Bond novels there.

You can listen to the goldeneye's whistling wingbeats here.  Watch a video of the courtship display here.  And listen to Bill Oddie's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day here.