I can't answer your question about whether it was a male or female but I have pics of it. I'm interested in the answer though!

http://www.birdfellow.com/photos/thumbnails/770-ridgefield-and-woodland-bottoms-april-2013?id=9594


Sent from my iPhone

>
> Message: 10
> Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:58:22 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Ronald Friesz <rcfriesz at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Tweeters] Woodland Bottoms - Tufted Duck (maybe)
> To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Message-ID:
> <1366383502.51016.YahooMailNeo at web121903.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> Tweeters,
>
> Yesterday, I visited the 'Woodland Bottoms' looking for the Clark's Grebe reported by Russ Koppendrayer at the Columbia River access south of Caples Road. No luck finding the Clark's among the 75 plus Westerns, although many were sleeping with tucked heads.
>
>
> However, among the grebes were scattered Lesser Scaup and another diver with a profile similar to a Ring-necked Duck. It had a dark, tufted head, gray bill with black tip (no rings), black back, and gray sides. It appeared to be a Tufted Duck in eclipse plumage, but according to Sibley, drakes should have white sides by this time of year.
>
> My questions: Are some individuals (sub-adults) late in obtaining white sides; is more than one-year required to reach complete maturity, or could this be a hybrid. Any ideas?
>
> Ron Friesz
> Ridgefield, WA
>
> rcfriesz at yahoo dot com
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20130420/91bb7c48/attachment.htm