"The Buffleheads are being difficult!" David Barrett, who runs the Manhattan Bird Alert Twitter, told me earlier this week as he tried to capture the newly arrived ducks in Central Park. They were floating too far offshore in the Reservoir to get a good shot that day.
The Bufflehead (North America's smallest diving duck) isn't uncommon in these parts, but the first four of the season just arrived this week, Barrett said. During our long pandemic winter, they will be a common sight if you're walking in the right place. "They are present throughout the colder months, mostly on the Reservoir though they can appear on any water body in Central Park."
Between November and April, the Reservoir may see anywhere from 2 to 25 Buffleheads, though they won't all look like the above — that's the more vibrantly colored male.
Buffleheads can also be found in the city's other boroughs — "They are showing up now in Brooklyn on Prospect Park's Lake," Barrett noted. "In Queens, Meadow Lake and Jamaica Bay's West Pond have them. Soon they will be common on the rivers, lakes, and coastal shoreline throughout New York City."
And if you want to seek them out, you shouldn't run into the same problem Barrett did earlier this week — typically you'll find them bobbing for aquatic invertebrates and crayfish closer the perimeter, where it's more shallow and they can dive to the bottom.
Buffleheads! Not the Mandarin Duck, but hey, it's 2020 and we take any ounce of joy we can get.
Here's a visual guide to help you spot them:
A female Bufflehead has grey feathering:
If you spot this little dance, the male is trying to get the attention of a female:
We may be in a pandemic but you still gotta keep those feathers looking nice:
And here we have a Bufflehead dining on some 5-star crayfish in Central Park:
