Troops: I will have to get back down and see if we can catch a similar looking bird hanging out with some company. I've never had one in hand. This one was a loner. It was also tolerant of our presence, and that's not typical of the golden eyes in the past. For some reason, we don't have many of them around this year. We typically get quite a few of the Commons, but the Barrows are rare for us. We're about 6 hrs driving time in from the coast.
I appreciate the feedback. It's chunkiness and stiff tail had me leaning to ruddy, but color was not matching up with anything at all in our shelf full of books. One would think he could find a better array of images on the web than seem to be available. Guess folks are just tight with their pictures.
I did a bit more surfing, and finally found one image of a pair that meshes well with this photo. The bill on our bird is a bit darker than in this link, but everything else looks really close. Could be bill color changes with proximity of the breeding season.
Another Barrow's Golden Eye photo.. Thanks. Once again, I've learned something, and as usual, it's that I don't know sh-t. 1Minute
