Wildlife Up Close: Lesser Scaup

This gallery contains 3 photos. Lesser Scaups look like carbon copies of Greater Scaups (down to the black and white plumage, blue bills and yellow eyes) — except that the latter are smaller, and have a bump on the back of their heads. Photographed April 18 at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

Here’s a trio (two males and a browner female  — we’ll call them Peter, Paul, and Mary) keeping out of the shade and away from the cameras. Given their wariness around humans, Lesser Scaups, along with the Hooded Mergansers, are the more secretive and harder-to-photograph waterfowl at the sanctuary. Photographed April 18 at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

This female Lesser Scaup was photographed on a rather cloudy and overcast December 13 at Piper Spit / Burnaby Lake. She’s just one of a handful of Lesser Scaups that will actually approach humans (unlike Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye ducks).