Duck at Silver Salmon Lakes in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska (2 Viewers)

[vbnut]

These images were all taken in the afternoon of July 18, 2024, at Silver Salmon Lakes in Alaska's Lake Clark National Park.

The first two images are of some kind of duck that was swimming around, calling, and occasionally flying low over the lake. None of the other folks that were there could identify the bird, and I wasn't able to come up with anything from my bird ID books when I got home. Any help identifying it would be appreciated.

After cruising to the other end of the lake, we stopped on our return, about an hour later, to take photos of the water lilies. Almost immediately the little duckling in the third image came paddling over to the boat. It stayed nearby for 10 minutes, moving from one side of the boat to the other, playing on the lily pads, and making plaintive calls. We were a group of photographers, so we were enjoying the opportunity to take photos and videos from very close by. It was an amazing experience. There was no adult duck anywhere in sight, so we were all concerned that it was an orphan. We did speculate that the duck in the first two images was the parent, and had been looking for ducking. We felt that we couldn't start up the boat motor to leave because the ducking could get caught up in it, but eventually it paddled far enough away that we decided it was safe. Can anyone help identify the duckling, and could it have been the child of the duck in the first two images?

 

[Bewick]

Dark capped, peaked heads- female Ring-necked ducks

Edit- Answer to your question is yes, also ducklings are typically raised by the females- males tend to leave when the female begins incubating.

 

[vbnut]

Thank you. Now I see that the female Ring-necked duck images in my books are quite a good match.

Is there any reliable way to know if the ducking is the same species?

 

[nartreb]

DNA testing is quite reliable

Ducklings of many species have very similar appearance - even geese are quite similar (though tend to be paler and of course larger at a given age). To make things more difficult, appearance will vary with age and can be variable within species. Domestic mallards, as always, can have unusual color variations.

Yours looks likely for ring-necked duck -- for example, it doesn't have the strong eye-stripe that's typical of mallard ducklings. But it's quite hard to say it's not, say, a scaup. In Alaska, range may be useful. E-bird shows both species of scaup, as well as ring-necked, are observed (not often) at Silver Salmon lodge (and much more regularly on the east side of Cook Straight - I'm guessing the east side is visited more often), but the numbers seem to be low enough that if I saw an adult, I'd assume the nearest duckling was the same species.

 

[vbnut]

Thank you for the detailed information. I was afraid that was the case, but at least I now have more knowledge.

Interestingly, there were several folks in the photography tour that volunteer at a bird rescue organization, but due to the limited capacity of the boat, they didn't see the duckling (they did that boat trip later). Our guide, jokingly commented that it was a good thing they weren't there, as he was sure they would have tried to "rescue" the orphan duckling, which is illegal in the Lake Clark National Park.