Buffleheads, Mississippi Valley, Green Island Preserve, Iowa
Without any doubt the Bufflehead is one of the prettiest ducks we enjoy watching at this time of the year. It is the smallest of the diving ducks. They feed on insects, crustaceans, mollusks, and seeds. Their prey is swallowed underwater. Soon they will move on to their breeding grounds up in Canada. They nest in cavities that are mostly made by woodpeckers, in particular Northern Flickers.
It looks like it isn’t difficult to photograph this duck but they are very fast and hardly ever come to a total standstill. Another male Bufflehead was trailing behind those three and both pairs were very busy feeding in the shallow waters of a lake in the Green Island Preserve yesterday. As so often, with the ice just gone and warm air over the water, heat shimmer effects the focus of the camera and my keeper rate for sharp images was not as high as usual.