{"id":769,"date":"2013-01-21T08:06:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T13:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naturalcrooks.com\/rambles\/?p=769"},"modified":"2025-05-14T19:21:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:21:58","slug":"common-goldeneye-ducks-arkendo-park-oakville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naturalcrooks.com\/rambles\/common-goldeneye-ducks-arkendo-park-oakville\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Goldeneyes Duck into View at Arkendo Park, Oakville"},"content":{"rendered":"

While merganser watching at Arkendo Park, I kept noticing a couple of rather nondescript female ducks diving steadily away near shore but a good few hundred metres from me. It wasn’t till I walked along the entire path beside Lake Ontario that I met the males and confirmed that these were Common Goldeneye.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

The male Common Goldeneye, besides the very obvious yellow-gold eyes, has a head that looks black until the sun catches the feathers. Then it shades into iridescent green. It’s not as brightly green as a mallard, but it still looks sharp.<\/p>\n

The females have quite an interesting two-toned beak. At first I thought I was imagining it, until I realized that ALL of the females had that glowing patch of yellow.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

These ducks were diving steadily. A check at home of the information on the Cornell University site said that Common Goldeneye eat aquatic invertebrates. That didn’t exactly tell me what they were feeding on. So I checked a University of Michigan site. It said that although they eat aquatic insects during the breeding season, in the winter they more often live off of fish, crustaceans and mollusks. A bit more hunting around suggested that they will eat zebra mussels.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

I also discovered at home that the immature ducks look somewhat like the females. So possibly some of the Common Goldeneye I was watching were juvenile males, not females.<\/p>\n

Further Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n