Common Goldeneye, Bucephala clangula


Common Goldeneye
An adult male. A wintering flock of Common Goldeneye forms on Shoreline Lake in Mountain View every year, and I've spent a lot of time with these ducks, making possible the following extended photo exhibit of the phases and behaviors found among this especially lively and photogenic species.


Common Goldeneye
Above and below, first-winter males, with gray feathers in the loral spot and on the scapulars and flanks. The head is usually green, as above, often with a bit of brown showing, and occasionally with the head all-brown, as below. 


Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
Above, an adult female; below a female in its first-winter, with the bill all dark and the iris a duller yellow.


Common Goldeneye


Common Goldeneye
An adult male flies, above; a first-winter female, below.

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
A male, above, and a female, below, landing. Both are adults.

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
A male with a clam, above, a female with a crab, below. Goldeneye are diving ducks, and they feed extensively on crustaceans.

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
Common Goldeneye do most of their preening on the water, as shown above. The behavior below followed on the preening; the duck is doing something to his foot with his bill, or to his bill with his foot. Preening? (Does a duck's foot need to be oiled?) Cleaning the foot? Cleaning the inside of the bill ("brushing his teeth")?

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
Rearing male, showing overwing white secondaries and coverts, above; seen from the front,
below.


Common Goldeneye


Common Goldeneye
Male swimming with head held low in the water, an aggressive move.


Common Goldeneye Flock
Above, five males accompanying a single female, a kind of competitive courtship seen during fall pair-formation. Below, competitive courtship isn't always peaceful: a male charging at a courting rival.

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye
Birds of North America Online speaks of the "spectacular courting displays" of the Common Goldeneye, of which the most distinctive is said to be the "Head-throw-kick." In this maneuver, the male "thrusts his head straight forward, then lowers it to his rump with his bill pointed back past vertical, at which point he utters a single, grating call, thrusting his head rapidly forward (sometimes flicking it from one side to the other) while kicking water out with his feet." The picture above shows a thrust, the one below shows ...

Common Goldeneye
...a throw of the head back to the rump, and the one below shows...

Common Goldeneye
...an example of the final move in the sequence, the bird kicking water backwards with the head again thrust forward.

Common Goldeneye
During courtship, the females make their own ritual moves encouraging the male's advances.

Common Goldeneye
After the expenditure of all that energy, the males and female do form pairs from fall through to early spring. But they don't actually mate or nest here in the Bay Area; rather they leave starting in late February and nest after migrating to lakes and streams in the forests of Canada and Alaska.


Common Goldeneye and Barrow's Goldeneye
Above, a Common Goldeneye female with a male Barrow's Goldeneye, identified as such by a crescent rather than a round shape to the loral spot. Barrow's are uncommon in our area, with usually one or two pairs on Shoreline Lake in winter, where Commons can number fifty or more. Birds of these two closely related species sometimes mate, producing hybrid young.


There can also be hybrids of goldeneye with other related diving ducks; see here for a Bufflehead x goldeneye hybrid, with the goldeneye probably a Common.