Countryside Ranger column: Look offshore to spot goldeneye

Can I recommend standing on a windswept East Lothian coastline and looking for ducks?

It will provide a welcome distraction and it’s the perfect time to do this, as many species of duck will be pairing up over the winter months. So the males will be looking their best in their breeding plumage and they will be putting on displays to attract females.

Our smallest duck is the teal, its size being reflected in its old Gaelic names meaning little duck and elf duck. The male teal are also one of our best-looking ducks – the body is a dappled grey merging into a yellowy spotted chest, while the tail is yellow with black edging. However, the bird’s head is the main attraction, being a lovely russet colour with broad green eye-patches.

It may not surprise you to know that the colour teal derives its name from the duck. Inevitably, the female is more drab, but both sexes display bright green wing patches in flight.

A male teal. Image: Jim Wood

Duck species generally feed in two different ways: diving, to take food underwater, or dabbling on or near the surface. Teal are very much dabblers, taking plant material and small invertebrates.

We’re unlikely to see many teal during the summer, as there’s only a couple of thousand breeding pairs in the UK and these tend to be found around upland moors and lakes. During winter, these numbers are boosted by an influx of birds from northern Europe; these can be seen in decent-sized flocks in sheltered coastal areas and nearby freshwater.

Incidentally, one of the collective nouns for teal is a ‘spring’. This comes from their habit of taking to the air vertically, as a flock, when startled.

Another duck seen offshore during January is the goldeneye. There are a small number of pairs which breed in the Scottish Highlands but many thousands of birds migrate here for the winter.

Again, the females are dull in appearance, being brown and grey in colour. This is despite the fact that they are less in need of camouflage than the ground-nesting ducks, since they build their nests in trees.

The males, however, have a black and white body and an iridescent green head with a large white patch on the cheek. Seen in a good light, they can look quite stunning. Both males and females have a distinctive yellow (or even golden) eye, which gives the bird its name.

A goldeneye displaying

The courtship display of the male goldeneye is a sight to be seen. It involves a lot of head shaking and neck stretching, and one movement in which the bird puts his head so far back that it’s difficult to believe it’s possible. It looks incredibly painful, but it does seem to attract the females.

In addition to these two species, our coastal waters host many other wintering ducks. Look out for eider, wigeon, common and velvet scoter, scaup and long-tailed duck.

So wrap up warm and get yourselves out there.