Redheads (Aythya americana) have ruddy red heads with bright, yellow eyes. Drake redheads have gray and white vermiculated plumage along their backs and white underbellies. Hens are mostly gray brown in color, with a white chin, small eye patch, and belly. Drakes have blue gray bills topped with black, and females display a slightly darker version. Both sexes display mostly brown wings that contrasts with the light gray secondaries and primaries. Hen redheads and ring-necked ducks look very similar. Both have dark upper wings, with redheads usually expressing slightly more vermiculation. In flight, redheads are characterized as fast fliers with shallow wingbeats. While hen redhead raspy kwaks are infrequenty vocalized, drake redheads can be identified by their typical wheezy feline-sounding weeouh and rolling rrrrrrr calls. Like most diving ducks, they decoy well. Use the growling rrrrrr when calling to them.
Redhead breeding zone ranges from secluded Alaska, central Canada, and norther-western United States. Most are found in central Canada in seasonal ponds containing cattails and bulrushes for nesting and foraging. Hens are the most prolific example brood parasitism, laying eggs in the nests of their own species, that of many other species of ducks, and have even laid eggs in the nests of Northern Harriers. Compared to other ducklings among the Aythya genus, ducklings are the lightest and yellowest, and sport gray legs and feet lighter than their adult redheads.
These medium-sized divers are very sociable and can be seen in flocks numbering into the thousands during times of migration. During the wintering season, redhead density is greatest around Lake Erie, the coast of North Carolina, and especially throughout the Gulf Coast, but may be found throughout the U.S. with the exception of some northwestern states. There’s no doubting the redheads are in when massive flocks trade across New York’s finger lakes, it’s said. Texas’s Matagorda Bay usually overwinters very many and has a long-standing reputation for bagging prime drakes within the US. Redheads wintering on the Gulf of Mexico will eat small snails and clams along with shoalgrass, seeking quieter conditions nearer to shore when the winds kick up, and coming inland to drink freshwater.