Another Merganser

After researching the hooded merganser I posted about yesterday, I got interested in this little enclave of waterfowl all over again.  I remembered photographing another merganser last year, and so looked up those photos.  Here is a female from last spring

The only problem was that I wasn't sure if this was a common or a red-breasted merganser.  The hens are difficult to tell apart, and my pictures were distant and murky.

In my quest to find out, I ended up at allaboutbirds.com, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  I end up there a lot.  They give succinct, reliable information and have nice color photos.  Here's a link to their excellent website:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Merganser/id

I learned that the common merganser hen has a white chin patch, while the red-breasted hen does not.  Instead, she has a dark or pale chin.  Also, the common merganser has a short crest, but the red-breasted has a longer, double crest.  That's it.  Those are the two big differences.

Based on that information, I looked over my photos again.  The crest on my bird is hard to see,  but the lack of a white chin spot leads me to believe that what we have here is a female red-breasted merganser.