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Readhead

(Aytha americana)

Readhead, (Wildlife) image The readhead duck is a medium-sized diving duck. The male has a large round chestnut-red head, black breast and under tail and a gray body. Its bill is blue with a dark tip. The female is uniformly brown. This duck is commonly mistaken for the canvasback which has the same markings, but has a much paler back and sides, as well as a longer, slimmer black bill.

Redheads breed primarily in the Prairie Provinces and inter-mountain valleys on freshwater marshes all the way into Nevada, Arizona and Colorado and as far east as New York. The redhead will mostly winter along the Gulf coast of Texas and northeastern Mexico, with lesser concentrations in Florida and the Yucatan peninsula. However, this diving duck will also winter on coastal bays of the Pacific coast, specifically in Sonora and Sinaloa. In California, redheads tend to breed locally throughout northernmost refuges, as well as in the Central Valley.

Because they are diving birds, redheads eat submerged vegetation in sloughs, lakes, and marshes. Nests are commonly built in reeds or marsh grass using down feathers.

Some redheads, primarily those that nest in the Salt Lake area of Utah, migrate east, and some west. A large portion of these birds migrate into the San Francisco Bay, while others go east to the Chesapeake Bay.