Bufflehead

Range Map
Bucephala albeola

The Bufflehead is a smallish diving duck that breeds in central Canada and Alaska. Except for a few locations in the coastal Pacific Northwest and southeastern Alaska, these ducks spend their winters in the USA and Mexico, though they’ve occasionally wandered across the Pacific Ocean to winter in Japan and Kamchatka, or east across the Atlantic Ocean into Greenland and Europe. Like their closest relatives the Goldeneyes, Buffleheads are tree cavity nesters, and their small size allows them to occupy cavities as small as those excavated by Northern Flickers, holes too small for their larger cousins to exploit. Unlike most ducks, Buffleheads pair-bond for many years, if not for life.

Most of my encounters with these diminutive ducks have been in southern California, but I’ve also met in northern California, Oregon and Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, and in British Columbia.

Modern science considers the Bufflehead as monotypic (i.e. there are no subspecies).

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