Hooded Merganser

I had half an hour to waste this morning, between Nia's school activities, and I found some hooded mergansers on a retention pond in town; they are tiny birds and very shy, and it is a large pond, but I took a few shots, and then later in the day went back with a much longer lens, hoping they were still there. I have not seen these birds in the wild before; I think the ones that are seen occasionally in the UK are escapees from private collections or zoos. There were about 12 there this afternoon, but the long lens failed me completely, (and I lost my new glasses), so I might as well have stayed home as this is a shot I took originally this morning.

A species of fossil duck from the Late Pleistocene of Vero Beach, Florida, was described as Querquedula floridana (a genus now included in Anas), but upon reexamination turned out to be a species closely related to the Hooded Merganser; it is now named Lophodytes floridanus, but the exact relationship between this bird and the modern species is unknown.