Vermont Rare Bird Reports 2023

Very cold and windy conditions! 20°F, 20 MPH north wind, big waves

Hawke Endurance ED scope, 25x-75x
Canon 500mm x 1.4x lens, 700mm equivalent

I have seen Tufted Ducks on Lake Champlain a small number of times. I have never identified a hybrid previously.

Open water of Lake Champlain, near enough to shore to afford clear viewing through a scope. In a large raft of >2200 ducks, mostly Greater and Lesser Scaup, with smaller numbers of Common Goldeneye, and a few associated Redheads, Canvasbacks, American Black Ducks, and Mallards.

Swimming in the waves with the scaup. When it dove I lost sight of it, and was near enough to frostbite by that point that I did not try to relocate it in the mass of ducks!

Silent

In with the huge raft of scaup north of the bridge. Male. Black back with convex border with bright white sides. A short tuft, more of a very prominent sharp peak, much more so than a Lesser Scaup or Ring-necked Duck. No white spur of a Ring-necked Duck. Watched for a minute through the scope, then the bird dove and I lost it in the crowd. Distant photos.

Follow-up: I initially reported this bird as a Tufted Duck, but after listening to discussion as to whether this might be a Tufted x scaup hybrid, and after looking more carefully at my photos, and an array of other photos of hybrids, and soliciting opinions from others, I agree with the hybrid ID.

In particular, while the bright white sides and sharp contrast with a dark back point to Tufted Duck, the back appears to be too light for a pure Tufted Duck. In the field, I had not noticed this, and was satisfied with “dark back = Tufted Duck.” But my photos show a faint but clear contrast between the black head/neck and a slightly lighter back, which I hadn't noticed in the field. The back is a slate gray, darker than a typical scaup but not the pure jet black of a Tufted Duck. While recognizing that photos can often be misleading, with poor lighting possibly leading to false impressions of color, in this case I'm tempted to put more weight on the photos than on my field observations, which are subject to their own biases (particularly when the viewing conditions were as challenging as they were!).

Furthermore, after looking at many photos of hybrids and of Tufted Ducks with short tufts, I conclude that the appearance of this tuft points more strongly to a hybrid than to a short-tufted Tufted Duck. Although male Tufted Ducks can display a short tuft, the tuft on this bird is a stout, prominent peak, not the wispy feathers of a tuft that has been lost or just growing in. And while the short tuft is not by itself necessarily indicative of a hybrid, it is consistent with one.

As far as I can tell, this would be only the third record of a TUDU x scaup hybrid on Lake Champlain, and the first from Vermont.

Similar in size and shape to the scaup it was swimming with

Black head with a short tuft in the form of a stout, sharp peak.

Scaup-like bill, pale blue-gray with a dark tip

Very dark, contrasting with white sides. I was not considering hybrid in the field, so I called it "black", but subsequent looks at my photos and photos from others revealed it to be a dark slate gray, darker than a scaup but lighter than the jet-black back of a Tufted Duck. A contrast between the back and the black neck/breast is visible.

Black breast, clear white sides

Tufted Duck: see description
Ring-necked Duck: white sides, no vertical white bar

As far as I can tell, six people saw this bird between January 15-18 (five on the Vermont side and one on the New York side), and opinion is divided 3:3 as to whether this is a Tufted Duck or a hybrid! I still remain confident that this was indeed a hybrid.