A First Goldeneye

I flew four hours on a jet, sailed two days on a cruise ship, rode one hour in a van, and motored a half-hour in a boat - all to find my very first gartered trogon a couple of weeks ago. In contrast last weekend it only took a ten-minute walk from my front door to discover my first male common goldeneye.

While the trogon was in far-away Belize, joined by several other exotic first-time finds that never venture into the United States, the goldeneye is actually a regular winter visitor to our country. Every year I encounter a small number along the Arizona Canal that supplies fresh water to Phoenix and that also provides pathways on its banks for runners like me. Just this past December I spied my first goldeneyes of the season, a pair of females, on one of my morning jogs.

They're distinctive birds for reasons besides their strikingly bright yellow eyes. The goldeneyes' long migrations are impressive flights of great distances, reaching Arizona in the winter after breeding as far away as northern Alaska in the summer.

Unlike the much more numerous mallards that frequent Phoenix's waterways all year long, the goldeneyes don't dabble at the water's surface. Rather they dive completely underwater, disappearing for ten to twenty seconds at a time when hunting for food. A trio of females currently gathering on the canal appear as only a couple or even a single if I don't pause long enough to wait for them to all surface.

Until last weekend I had never seen a male goldeneye before. The females have cinnamon-colored heads and mottled brown bodies while the male has an intensely dark green head and bright white flanks. A white patch prominently covers each of his cheeks, which birds don't technically have.

It was the goldeneye's white markings that drew my attention when I ran by what appeared to be a flock of mallards. They were dabbling in a stretch of canal whose water was lowering as the local utility prepared their yearly maintenance of dredging and cleaning the waterway. Since it was a cloudy day, the goldeneye's green head looked jet black; in fact he stood out as a black and white decoy conspicuously NOT blending into the menagerie of greens and browns marking the other ducks.

Ten minutes later I was back home after my run, where I confirmed in a bird book that I had indeed seen my first male common goldeneye. After showering and shaving, I drove my car to a parking spot conveniently located for runners near the canal. With my zoom lens pointed on the flock of ducks, I approached the goldeneye. While the clouds obscured but the faintest trace of green in the bird's head, I snapped several pictures. However like with many migratory birds, the goldeneye quickly grew wary of my attention and flew off in an easterly direction, its wings whistling in flight.

I ran again the next day, but the male goldeneye was nowhere to be seen. The trio of females were still almost a mile away along the same canal, alone except for a stray mallard or two. However two days later, jogging in the same area, I noticed a third bird with the ladies - it was a male goldeneye! And lucky for me, it was a sunny morning so I could see his green head gleaming.

I left fifteen minutes early for an appointment later that morning so I'd have time to visit the birds with my camera. The sun was still shining and there was fortunately an area to park my car. A kingfisher, another winter visitor I've never seen on the canal, noisily sounded his presence in rapid clicks before landing on an overhead power line. But more importantly all the goldeneyes were present.

The male allowed me to snap shots as long as I desired, apparently less insecure in the presence of his small harem. The birds swam in a tight formation, the male always in the lead or at the rear, each bird turning simultaneously on some subtle cue. The females took turns diving, disappearing for several seconds at a time, but the male never seemed to take his eyes off of me.

Ten minutes were nine minutes more than I needed to gawk at these visitors. On my three subsequent runs, all four birds, particularly the emerald-headed fella, were still plying that deeper stretch of canal. However yesterday, the male was absent: not with the ladies, not with some nearby mallards, nowhere. I paused to see if he were diving, but there was no sign of him.

Hopefully he'll remain as lucky in his new travels as I was in simply running into him.