Eagle-Eye Nielsen Spots Two Black Scoters

I really should tell this story on recycling day because it's a story that I keep telling over and over. It's my favourite bird watching story and it involves my favourite bird watcher...Wendy.

Many years ago Wendy and I were driving along the road in south central New Brunswick admiring the flora and the fauna. Getting swept up into the moment, Wendy decided to delve a little deeper in the fauna and try to ascertain the exact species of the bird that was flitting before her eyes. The conversation, though brief, was most entertaining. Here's how it went:

Wendy: what's that black bird with the red wings?

Ian: It's a red-winged blackbird.

The conversation ended abruptly with an outburst of laughter. I can't remember if we were both laughing, or just me. In any event, we both laugh about the story now. Since that time, Wendy has become a legend in our family, at least in terms of her ornithological pursuits.

Yesterday, Wendy was sitting in the sun-room looking out the window at the lake. "What's that dark thing in the water?", she exclaimed before answering her own question. "Oh, it's just a dead-head", she replied. I sat mute on the couch, but not for long. It would be unusual for a dead-head to be in the water at this time, so I craned my neck around to see what the fuss was all about. Using all the technology available to me without actually getting off the couch, I eyeballed two ducks floating on the far side of the lake. To Wendy's credit, they did look like a stick floating in the water.

To Wendy's credit, the binoculars confirmed that she spotted not two black ducks, but two black scoters....a somewhat unusual sighting for our inland waterway. I have seen black scoters on our lake before, but only twice in 22 years. Wendy's keen feather-finding eyes spotted two male black scoters. As they were on the other side of the lake, I magnified today's image 500% in order to see some detail, albeit pixelated. The black scoters are rather nondescript except for their comical orange beaks. They look like the creation of a practical joker, a malevolent god, or a small child with scissors, a glue stick and a bird book. To my eyes they look like a cross between a black duck and a puffin.

If I was given the task of naming them for all eternity, I would not have named them black scoters because no one, not even Audubon, knows what it means to scote. It's not even a real word. I would have named them tangerine-billed black quackers. Far more apt, don't you think?