What loons? (New York) (1 Viewer)

Dear birders,

Do you know what loon and how to tell a Common Loon or a Red-throated loon? Usually i see the beak and size but in flight they are hard to see.I took the photos from New York.





Thanks for your helps

Because of the bill size, I'm gonna go with Red-throated. I may well be wrong though. Although the Common Loon is more appropriate for New York assuming this was captured in NY.

Agreed on Red-throated Loons - less abundant than Commons but regular in NY in winter.

Agree with Red-throated Loon.

I can see the beak just fine in these photos.

In addition to the beak of red-throated being thinner and less symmetric (the bottom half tapers upward while the top half stays nearly straight) than Common, red-throated has a different neck pattern. Common has a white stripe partly around the neck; though the white location varies between breeding and non-breeding plumage, the neck will almost always have a patchy quality, even in transition.

Red-throated in non-breeding looks like your second photo: fairly clean, fairly straight-along-the-line-of-the-neck transition between black and white, with a little "comma" hanging down behind the eye. Your first photo has a greyer throat, I think left over from juvenile plumage, but still a fairly clean black-white line along the neck. Compare the much patchier neck of this common loon (and note the thick beak):
http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Image:071028_Common_Loon_0470.jpg

The "star-spangled" appearance of your second bird's upperparts is a good illustration of why the Red-throated [Loon/Diver] is called Gavia stellata

Anyone else find the bill shape odd for pic #1? If I had to bet I would go with juvenile red-throated loon because of location and the speckling on the back of the neck. However, the bill looks more like a pacific and in the unusual pose that it is in its neck does not appear to be hanging like a red-throated loon. If that speckling wasn't prominent on the back of the neck I would be calling this a pacific. Any thoughts?

Red-Throated with white around eye. Great photos.