Casual birding between Saturday downpours......

While visiting the "Ol' Fishin' Hole" in Kent I spied a beautiful ring
necked duck hanging out with the coots. This is the first time I've
seen one of these beauties. I had my ancient binoculars with me and was
able to get some good close-ups on it. It's bill looked like someone had
taken white paint to it, outlined it and painted some extra lines across
it. The bird had an unreal quality to it.

Are ring necked ducks very common in semi-urban settings? (I'm only a
casual birder, so I'm still quite naieve about fine details of birding)

Oh, I also saw several pairs of hooded mergansers, lots of coots, the
usual gang of mallards, Thayer's Gulls??? (See my gull note), Glaucous
gulls, and several pairs of American wigeons, and some odd-ball wigeons
that may have been hybrids. The female wigeons that seemed to be paired
to the odd-ball male wigeons appeared to be Eurasian, but the males with
them looked like washed out American wigeons - their green wasn't as
distinct or intense as the male Americans in the same group.

Can anyone explain this please? Do the wigeons interbreed?

Thanks,

Lydia Gaebe In Kent, WA
lydia at wizards.net
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