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Hooded Merganser | Lophodytes cucullatus
Kokardezaagbek | Serreta capuchona
The Hooded Merganser is a small merganser with a fan-shaped crest that it can raise. It breeds on wooded waters in North America and winters in the southern United States and northern Mexico. In Cuba it is a rare winter visitor, elsewhere in the Caribbean a vagrant. In Cuba it is called pato de cresta.
Voice
Usually silent in winter. The female gives a hoarse krrek; the displaying male a rolling, frog-like call.
Recording: Dan Lane — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
40–49 cm, slim, with a thin narrow bill and a long tail that is often cocked. The male has a black head and back, a large black-edged white patch in the crest that forms a white half-circle when raised, two black bars on the side of the white breast and rufous flanks; the eye is yellow. Female and young birds are grey-brown with a warm rufous, shaggy crest and a dark upper mandible with a yellow to orange lower mandible. In flight it is small and fast, with a white patch on the secondaries.
Confusion species
Male Bufflehead Bucephala albeola also has a large white patch on the head, but white flanks and a short bill. Female Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator is larger and greyer, with a long red bill and a ragged, less broad crest. The small dark build, thin bill and fan-shaped crest separate Hooded Merganser from all ducks in the region.
Habitat
Freshwater lakes, ponds and reservoirs with clear water, slow rivers and sheltered lagoons, sometimes fringed with mangroves. It dives for small fish, crustaceans and aquatic insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In Cuba a rare winter visitor. Elsewhere a vagrant; most records come from the Bahamas, with further records from, among other islands, the Cayman Islands, Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico, where the species is regarded as accidental. Most records fall in the north of the region. Outside the region it breeds in southern Canada and the northern and eastern United States and winters in the southern United States and northern Mexico.
How and when to look
A Hooded Merganser in the region often keeps to the sheltered edge of a pond or lake among overhanging vegetation and dives a lot; females in particular are often missed.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. In the Caribbean a rare winter visitor and vagrant.
Scientific name
Lophodytes cucullatus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Mergus cucullatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Lophodytes was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. Lophodytes is Greek, from lophos 'crest' and dutēs 'diver', after the diving duck with its conspicuous crest. cucullatus is Latin for 'hooded', from cucullus 'hood', after the white crest the male raises like a cowl. The specimen the first description was based on came from Virginia and Carolina.