I believe I saw this bird on Monday 12-28 between 12pm -1pm in the same location. It was with some shovelers, green winged teal, Eurasian wigeon, American wigeon and Canada geese. I'm not very good at waterfowl ID so I thought that the unusual bird was a female teal or wigeon but it still didn't look quite right.

Cynthia Boyce
Seattle
Magnuson Park
Cynthia dot Boyce at Seattle dot gov

From: tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Eugene and Nancy Hunn
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 5:43 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] Magnuson Park Garganey

Tweets,

Brien Meilleur and I stumbled on a GARGANEY on the new pond system in Magnuson Park, Seattle, this afternoon. We think it is most likely an eclipse-type male plumage as the speculum is very well defined, though the head markings are typical of "female" Garganey plumages.

It took us a while to figure it out because the bird was actively diving, but in an odd auklet-like fashion, in what is a very shallow pond. We later watched shovelers doing the same. According to the books, Garganeys prefer shoveler-like filter feeding to up-ending like many dabblers, so perhaps this diving action was designed to stir up the mud of the bottom. If any of you has experience with this behavior in Garganeys we'd love to learn about it.

In any case, the bird was otherwise a perfect Garganey. It hung out for twenty minutes (from 3 PM, Tuesday, December 29) with a mixed flock of Canada Geese, Northern Shovelers, Green-winged Teal (nice direct comparisons), Gadwalls, and Mallards, before disappearing. We tried to relocate it a half-hour later (we were in the midst of a Big Day effort and had a few other fish to fry) but were unsuccessful, though by then it was nearly sunset and the bird in question apparently had flown off, perhaps to roost on Lake Washington. I have a few marginally recognizable digiscope photos, though the light was less than adequate for my equipment. I will share copies as soon as I down-load them.

The bird was a bit larger than a Green-winged Teal and notably more elongate, with a longer tail and more tapered head and bill, shaped somewhat like a female Hooded Merganser, it seemed to me. The bill was like a Pintail's but heavier, all dark gray. The bill was set off from the head and face by a prominent oval white spot in front of and just below the eye (loral spot). A dark line bisected the eye and was bordered above and below by a buffy supercilium (above) and "subcilium" (below). The throat was clear pale buffy. A striking feature was the strong white-bordered speculum visible as the bird swam. The speculum was bicolored, emerald green toward the body, black toward the wrist. This would seem to rule out an immature or adult female. The feathers of the breast and upper back/nape were strikingly if subtly patterned, with a small dark central dot in a pale buffy ground, margined terminally by dark brown. The tail appeared long and solid gray above. It flapped its wings once. The upper wing appeared gray, but our view was too brief to be certain of the upper wing pattern. In any case, the wings were not clipped and the bird apparently flew off while we were otherwise preoccupied.

Assuming the bird is not an escapee from some breeder's collection, it will be a King County first.

The pond complex where we found the bird is adjacent to (north and east of) a large parking lot just off the 65th St. entrance to Magnuson Park off Sand Point Way. Hope it sticks around.

Gene Hunn
Lake Forest Park, WA
enhunn323 at comcast.net