Also known as Bucephala albeola
The bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) is a small sea duck of the genus Bucephala, the goldeneyes. It breeds in Alaska and Canada and migrates in winter to southern North America. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Anas albeola.
bufflehead
Species
A small, teal-sized duck (13-15 inches), the male Bufflehead may be most easily identified by the large white patch on the back of its head. Other distinguishing characteristics include its iridescent green head, white body, and patchy black-and-white wings visible in flight. The female Bufflehead is dull brown above with a white belly, light brown flanks, and a smaller white patch behind the eye. Duck hunters refer to this species as the “butterball” in reference to the male’s large white head patch. The Bufflehead breeds primarily in west-central Canada, in central Alaska, and at higher elevations in the Rocky Mountains. Small numbers of Buffleheads breed elsewhere in western North America, extending east to the Great Lakes. This species migrates south for the winter, when it may be found unevenly distributed across the southern half of North America. Buffleheads are found locally in the interior of their winter range, but are more common along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts north to Nova Scotia and Alaska, respectively. In summer, Buffleheads breed on ponds and lakes near forests. Buffleheads are particularly attracted to forests inhabited by the Northern Flicker (Colaptes aura
via IUCN
via Wikidata · CC0
via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).