Tufted Ducks (Mr and Mrs)

Here are two tufted ducks (Aythya fuligula), a male (in focus) and a female. Their plumages are quite different (the male is contrasty black-and-white, and the female is shades of brown), and the males have a much more pronounced tuft (hence he is the focus of my picture).

Tufted ducks are adorable: they're quite small and very pebble-shaped! They are diving ducks and so feed (mostly) by foraging underwater for invertebrates and plant matter. They can stay underwater for an impressively long time, and will often surface quite some distance from where they originally dived. The ducklings are cute: when they are very small their down makes them too buoyant to dive just by ducking their head under, so they jump up into the air (clear of the water!) so that they hit the surface with more vertical speed so that they can submerge and then swim down!

The light was very poor today, so I had to push the sensitivity up which has rather dulled the intensity of the eye colour. Their yellow/orange eyes glow intensely. The males also have iridescent feathers on their head which reflect a wonderful purple/aubergine colour.