Bufflehead: Photos and Migration Patterns

Bufflehead composite image by Robert Mortensen

Check out those iridescent shades! A whole rainbow practically in one little face.

My eBird records indicate that I have only seen Buffleheads on 40 occasions. I thought it would be more than that. The handsome male Bufflehead featured in the photographs above was recently observed at my lunch hour birding patch along the Jordan River in Salt Lake City. I saw 100+ Buffleheads once at Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park in Idaho back in Nov 2009 and I have seen them in pretty good numbers at Farmington Bay WMA here in Utah.

Being a wintering duck in the places I have lived, I was curious about its migration patterns. Below is an animated eBird sightings map I made.

Stream of consciousness as I watch and ponder the animation: 

Major migration movements occur in May and October, just like one might expect. Late fall and winter sightings in Hawaii are pretty cool to know. Not shown are some sightings in the UK too. Some Buffleheads make it all the way into Mexico during the North American winter. In June, they get very far north near the Arctic circle. The west coast appears to host Buffleheads year round. I still wonder how much the lack of eBirding in July-September affect the quality of the map, not too mention the less populated and the challenging logistics of birding in the extreme and vast north of this continent to collect data for eBird.