The Bird of the Day today is the hooded merganser. I saw the pictured bird in a pond swimming next to some wood ducks. It was in the distance, but I spotted it with my long zoom lens.
I enjoy all of the types of mergansers, but was especially thrilled to see this one. The most common bird in this family that I see is the common merganser, followed by the red-breasted merganser. I very rarely get a sighting of the hooded merganser.
The hooded merganser is much smaller than the common and red-breasted mergansers. Female hooded mergansers have yellow on their lower mandible (bill), as opposed to an orange or red bill on the other mergansers.
