Bird of the week - Scaup

The blog seems to have been taken over by trail cameras and mammals since the turn of the year so here is something different.  This handsome duck has been resident all winter on a municipal lake only a mile from here.   At first he was a bit difficult to pick out from all the tufted ducks but now he is coming into his finest breeding plumage. This is a male scaup, also known as a greater scaup, Aythya marila.

The scaup is a diving duck and makes a very energetic leap as it starts its dive.

The scaup is in the same genus as tufted duck and pochard.  It has a similar shape to a pochard and similar colouring to a tufted duck.  Here is the scaup with a tufted duck behind.

Thomas Bewick described the scaup in volume II of A History of British Birds (1832).

He wrote

John James Audubon painted a pair of greater scaups for Birds of America.

Archibald Thorburn also painted pictures of scaups, this one showing a female as well.

Other male ducks showing off their colours on the lake were goldeneyes,

tufted ducks,

pochards,

and mallards.

Scaups are uncommon winter visitors to the UK.  They breed in the arctic so this one will be heading north quite soon. Scaups also breed in Northern Canada and from there they migrate to the USA for winter.