{"id":729,"date":"2007-02-14T20:19:13","date_gmt":"2007-02-15T03:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2007\/02\/14\/lesser-scaup-male\/"},"modified":"2007-02-14T20:19:13","modified_gmt":"2007-02-15T03:19:13","slug":"lesser-scaup-male","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2007\/02\/14\/lesser-scaup-male\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesser Scaup, Male"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/AllAboutBirds\/BirdGuide\/Lesser_Scaup_dtl.html\">Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)<\/a> is a fairly common winter visitor to lakes and larger ponds here in southeastern Arizona. I spotted this male Lesser Scaup begging for handouts with the rest of the park ducks in Tucson&#8217;s Lakeside Park in late December of 2006.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2007\/February\/Lesser-Scaup.jpg\" alt=\"Male Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)\" title=\"Male Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)\" width=\"480\" height=\"374\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A male Lesser Scaup has yellow eyes, a finely barred gray back, whitish gray sides, and a black head, chest, and rump. Unlike the white-ringed bill of a very similar male <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/01\/22\/ring-necked-ducks\/\">Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris)<\/a>, the only marking on the otherwise plain gray bill of a male Lesser Scaup is a small, black tip.<\/p>\n<p>Male Lesser Scaup are extremely similar to the closely related male <a href=\"http:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/AllAboutBirds\/BirdGuide\/Greater_Scaup_dtl.html\">Greater Scaup (Aythya marila)<\/a>, but their head shape and head and neck feather sheen can be used to distinguish them. A male Lesser Scaup has a tall, peaked head and a purplish sheen to his black head and neck feathers, while a male Greater Scaup has a lower, rounder head and a greenish sheen to his black head and neck feathers.<\/p>\n<p>Female Lesser Scaup are brown where the males are black and have a white ring of feathers around the base of their bills. They are very similar to female Greater Scaup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) is a fairly common winter visitor to lakes and larger ponds here in southeastern Arizona. I spotted this male Lesser Scaup begging for handouts with the rest of the park ducks in Tucson&#8217;s Lakeside Park in late December of 2006. A male Lesser Scaup has yellow eyes, a finely barred&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2007\/02\/14\/lesser-scaup-male\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}