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Red Breasted Merganser

The Red Breasted Merganser is a bird that prefers salt water.  Bodega Bay at certain times of year is a location on the California coast to view and photograph the Red Breasted Merganser.

The Red Breasted Merganser is a large diving duck with a long thin bill. It can be found in lakes, rivers and oceans but it does prefer salt water more than the other two species of Mergansers. This Red Breasted Merganser is a female.

The female Red Breasted Merganser has a dusky gray back with some small white patches in front of the tail. Female Red Breasted Mergansers greatly resemble common mergansers. They have cinnamon-brown heads and lightly mottled gray backs and sides. The Red Breasted Merganser can be noted by their white throat that will merge with their brown head. The common merganser’s throat is more sharply defined against its reddish-brown head. A Female Red Breasted Merganser will also have a slight protrusion of feathers at the back of the head.

The female Red Breasted Merganser has lighter red eyes and feet than the male. They have ash-gray shoulders and a small white patch on the speculum formed by the inner white secondaries, with a black base.

Both male and female of this species of diving duck have long, narrow bills with serrated edges. The bills are are bright red in the male while less colorful in the female.

Red-breasted mergansers feed on fish (herring, fry, minnows), fish eggs and occasionally shrimp and crabs. Usually they dive for food, hunting on lakes and rivers, in coastal bays and at sea.

The Red Breasted Merganser has been know to be the fastest bird in level flight, reaching speeds of 100 mph.

The Red Breasted Merganser is a migratory bird. It breeds in the far north and winters in coastal waters like that of Bodega Bay, California.