Hooded Merganser

This Hooded Merganser on Capitol Lake in Olympia on 31 March 2021 is another image that Erika strongly suggested that I take. Hooded Mergansers are such flamboyant ducks—passing without photographing is always hard. Although difficulties in censusing cloud our knowledge of the population status of these mergansers, data suggest that current numbers are either stable or increasing across the species’ range (Dugger et al. 2020).