Common Merganser

The first photo is of a drake Common Merganser that has been floating around my blog queue since 5 March 2020; the second is a drake Red-breasted Merganser photo Erika and I found on 22 December 2020 at he Nisqually wildlife refuge. Mergansers, because of their serrated bills, are perhaps the most specialized ducks. Among the ducks, mergansers are thought to be most closely related to the scoters, eiders, and goldeneyes. The duck family (Anatidae) is most closely related to Australian Magpie-geese (Anseranatidae) and, slightly more remotely, to the South American screamers (Anhimidae) (Winkler et  al. 2020; Pearce et al. 2020).