Duck in pond on Azores, Flores in October 2017 (1 Viewer)

Hi,
attached you will find 1 images of a drake duck, I am struggling to identify. First I thought, that this Lagoa da Patos is again a Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors) which I observed several times there. But now I saw no blue on the wing and the head looks strange. Maybe Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris) which they call Zarro-de-colar in portugues? But the ring is missing...
ID-help is highly appreaciated
Cheers
Johannes

Female/imm Redhead. Hasn't there been one in the area this autumn? perhaps same bird?

another duck a Blue-winged Teal?

SteveClifton said:

Female/imm Redhead. Hasn't there been one in the area this autumn? perhaps same bird?

Click to expand...

Hi,
Thanks a lot for the quick answer. All Aythya americana I saw, were from Teiceira. Attached I send another image of a duck, which was always not too far the 18th/19th of October. Is this a Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors)? The eye line and the broken eye-ring???
ID-help is highly appreaciated
Cheers
Johannes

bubo_bubo said:

Hi,
Thanks a lot for the quick answer. All Aythya americana I saw, were from Teiceira. Attached I send another image of a duck, which was always not too far the 18th/19th of October. Is this a Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors)? The eye line and the broken eye-ring???
ID-help is highly appreaciated
Cheers
Johannes

Click to expand...

Yes that's a BWTeal.

I've checked and the Redhead on Terceira was an eclipse drake, so not your bird. To the best of my knowledge your first bird looks to be a Redhead, so potentially a great rarity if it's the real deal. However, at the moment I can't eliminate a hybrid aythya of some sort...

Looks good for female ring-necked to me. You can see a faint ring on the bill.

Jeff hopkins said:

Looks good for female ring-necked to me. You can see a faint ring on the bill.

Click to expand...

I must say I considered this option to begin with, but quickly dismissed it as I didn't feel that the overall structure was right for RND. Also it would be a poorly marked female wouldn't it? I had a drake RND a few years ago on my local patch which stayed for several weeks, and went completely into eclipse plumage. It looked more like this bird, lacking the obvious paler face markings of a female, but being a drake it had an amber-coloured iris. Also it had a more obvious bill shape, being deep-based but tapering into a rather slender and more pointed tip than this bird shows. It also lacked the obvious rufous plumage tones that the subject bird shows (perhaps this changes with light?).

So I opted for Redhead as it's one of the few aytyha ducks that I haven't much experience of, other than a few in wildfowl collections from years ago, and the females do have more than a passing resemblance to female RND (perhaps females look like the closest North American duck sp. to RND?)

However, having done a bit of research I don't think it looks 100% like a normal Redhead either, so where does that leave us?

I was hoping someone with more experience of both would comment but since this hasn't happened yet after nearly 180 views I suspect this isn't going to be straightforward...

Jeff hopkins said:

Looks good for female ring-necked to me. You can see a faint ring on the bill.

Click to expand...

Johannes emailed me two more photos of this bird today, including an open-wing shot showing a fully grey wing-bar.

You were correct that it is a Ring-necked Duck. I just think the original image didn't look like a typical RND to me, illustrating that it's always better to post multiple images if possible. In the other images the bill looks typically deep-based and rather long/pointed towards the tip as you would expect.