I forgot who originally sent the note telling of the female Redheads
with white facial feathers. This posting helped to solve a long time
mystery for me. About 10 years ago while birding my old home patch, the
Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, I found a group of Redheads in early July.
They are very rare in summer in Toronto so it was a good find. The odd
thing I noticed was that all of the females had albino feathers on the
head, trying to make sense of this I hypothesized that one was the mother
and that the other ones were juveniles that shared their mother's partial
albinism. I guess it turns out that I was totally wrong. I must admit that
my theory was not all that satisfactory, but when I read about female
Redhead plumages I could not find anything relating to this. Thanks for
solving the puzzle.
As is typical in Science and Natural History as soon as you have one
thing adequately explained another question appears. I want to know what
this white on the face is all about. It may be homologous to the pale
face crescent that female Greater Scaups obtain in the summer. Are these
patters merely revealed by feather wear, or do they have a partial head
moult in the summer? Oldsquaws have supplemental moults, so perhaps so
do other ducks.

BTW- the main reason I concocted the mother and daughter hypothesis for
my Toronto Redheads was that I was convinced that they bred there that
year, and I was desperate to find proof. Redheads can be notoriously
difficult to confirm as a breeding species since they have a large tendency
to breed as brood parasites.

Al Jaramillo
jaramillo at sfu.ca
Vancouver, B.C.