Last week’s adventure consisted of tagging along with our waterfowl biologist on Barrow’s goldeneye surveys. I was excited at the prospect of finding some Barrow’s along the Maine coast, where many species of waterfowl chill out (no pun intended) during the winter months. Admittedly, I had never seen a Barrow’s before, and was more than a little rusty on my Barrow’s goldeneye facts. Thankfully, the biologist I accompanied was a fountain of knowledge.
Barrow’s goldeneyes spend their summers in the boreal forest from British Columbia to Alaska in western North America and in the Province of Quebec in the east.. The majority of Barrow’s spend the winter west of the Rocky Mountains, but a small percentage winter in Quebec, the Maritimes, and Maine. In Maine,
Barrow’s goldeneye surveys have been conducted for over 50 years but, up until 1993, the surveys were purely anecdotal, making it very difficult to discern any type of population trend. In 1999, MDIF&W biologists began surveying for Barrow’s goldeneyes, visiting 163 sites that either appeared to be prime Barrow’s wintering habitat, or where Barrow’s had been spotted previously. These 1999 surveys turned up bleak results. Fewer than 250 individual Barrow’s were estimated to be wintering in Maine. They were listed as a State Threatened species in 2007 and in 2009 a plan was developed to conduct coastal wintering surveys every four years, searching for a population trend. The 2009 survey showed a 22 percent decrease in total observations of Barrow’s wintering in Maine.
On the day that I participated, we surveyed coastal sites with open water around Portland using binoculars and spotting scopes. By lunch time we had surveyed six different sites and had counted hundreds of other waterfowl including Canada geese, bufflehead ducks, common eiders, hooded mergansers, common mergansers, red-breasted mergansers, mallards, black ducks, and common goldeneyes, but the Barrow’s remained elusive. A handful of individual Barrow’s had been spotted and reported on the E-bird website and during Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count only weeks before at two sites not far from where we were surveying. We visited those sites, but were not blessed with a glimpse of the ephemeral fowl.
Barrow’s goldeneyes appear similar to common goldeneyes, but there are a few distinctions that will help correctly identify them. Both goldeneyes have dark, helmet-shaped heads, short bills, and a white spot between the eye and the bill. The white spot on the head only occurs on the males. On the commons, this spot is round. On the Barrow’s, it is a large crescent. The females of both species sport a brown head and a gray-brown body. The females can be identified by the bill. The female Barrow’s entire bill is brightly colored and usually stands out. The female common’s bill is mostly dark, but may have a small light-colored patch at the end furthest from the face. If you are attempting to determine which goldeneye you are viewing from a distance, here’s a tip: the white of the chest connects directly with the white of the belly on the common goldeneye, whereas on the Barrow’s, the white between the chest and the belly is disrupted by a large black patch that comes down from the shoulder.
Although we didn’t have any luck at finding any Barrow’s at the sites I was able to visit, MDIF&W will continue to conduct site surveys along the Maine coast through February. If you are on the coast and spot a Barrow’s goldeneye, let us know! You can find contact information for the wildlife office nearest you by visiting our website: mefishwildlife.com.
Photos credit: Tim Bowman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
