David and other Tweeters,

Madge and Burn are Crash and Burn on this subject; they don't say a word
about this variant. Palmer, in Handbook of North American Birds, mentions
"occasionally the drake has white of forehead-crown extending down onto
upper cheek," and then goes on to add that the chin and throat can be
heavily spotted or even solid black. Nothing at all about ol' creamy cheek
(or we should be calling it "cream-throated," as the extreme, as in one I
photographed, shows no dark pigment at all below the eye band). As far as
I can tell, this beautiful creamy color is just the base color of the neck
exposed by the lack of markings. Ridgway and Friedman, who might have
described the variation, didn't get as far as ducks in their volumes.
Cramp and Simmons, in Birds of the Western Palearctic, don't describe it.

Remember, all the museums together in North America may have only a few
thousand male American Wigeons, and each of us Northwest birders sees many
more than that in our lifetimes. Some of these variants may even have
changed in frequency over time from the days when a lot of specimens were
collected. I just checked our collection, and, of our 24 male AMWI, one
has most of the cheeks and neck unmarked. Rather than a random sample, this
bird may have been singled out to be collected; we'll never know.

Curioser and curioser. It's obvious that with the thousands of birders out
there, we could be learning so much more about birds than is in the very
books that we use for reference. One of my fondest dreams would be for
that to come true.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416