18 inches long with a 25 inch wingspan. The Hooded Merganser is a small compact diving duck with a long pointed bill. The adult male has a yellow eye and a black head with a large white patch in the center of the crest. The back is black and the breast and belly are white. There are black and white stripes at the forward portion of reddish flanks. The male is in breeding plumage from fall to early summer. At other times it looks similar to the female but retains the yellow eye. The adult female has a brown eye and a cold gray-brown head, neck, flanks, back, and upperwings with a paler breast. Her belly is white and she has a reddish fan-like crest.
The Hooded Merganser is an uncommon spring and fall migrant through the area.
The Hooded Merganser is the smallest of three North American mergansers and the only one restricted to this continent. It breeds throughout a wide area in the forested east and northwest. In winter they prefer forested freshwater wetlands, brackish estuaries, and tidal creeks. Hooded Mergansers eat small fish, aquatic insects, and crustaceans, particularly crayfish, with the aid of eyes well-adapted to underwater vision.
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