Hooded Merganser, Dallas, Texas, USA (1 Viewer)

Can I get a little help with this ID, please? Is the merganser with the black bill and dark eyes a female or a juvenile male? My reference materials suggest that the female will have a light bill and dark eyes, and that a juvenile male will have a dark bill with yellow eyes... I'm confused! Thanks for any help!

Pictures taken Dec 23, 2019

When were the photos taken?

Sorry. The pictures were taken last week. Dec 23.

Thanks. Not sure what to make of it. The whitish patch behind the bill is anomalous in either sex.

A little paleness on the face or chin isn't too unusual in females - it's not really white, just a bit lighter than the rest of the face, and photographed in strong light. Look at DFW's second photo: the normal female also has some paleness in the same area.

But yeah, the combination of eye color and beak color is a little surprising. The body coloration is also interesting. In the second photo, look at the contrast between the black back and the brown body - I may be looking with a biased eye, but I think it looks a bit like the male on the left of the photo, and not the same as relatively grey, closer-to-uniform normal female in the foreground.

Intersex birds turn up with some regularity in other duck species, but this is the first candidate among mergansers that I can recall seeing.