American and Eurasian Wigeons

On 30 October 2020, I took photographs of a gaggle of American Wigeons on Olympia’s Capitol Lake. “What is the duck with the reddish head?” asked Erika. At the edge of the wigeon swarm swam an Eurasian Wigeon. This common European and Asian duck breeds into western Alaska. Migrants are regular, and locally common, along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. During the winter, we occasionally find this species at the Nisqually national wildlife refuge—this record is our first away from the refuge.