Long-tailed Duck — Wings of NH

What you notice first

A small, round, boldly pied sea duck well offshore, diving constantly, the drake trailing two long needle tail feathers — and on a still day, a yodelling, almost musical call carrying off the water.

Voice

Vocal for a duck. The drake gives a rich, yodelling "ow-owadl-ow" in loose chorus from a raft, one of the more pleasant sounds of a winter seawatch.

Where & when

Open ocean off Odiorne Point and Rye, the mouth of Hampton Harbor, and occasionally the deeper parts of Great Bay. December through March, best on a calm morning when the flocks sit close enough to scope.

Why it's hard

Not rare so much as offshore and weather-dependent. The birds winter on open salt water, often past the surf line, and a rough or foggy day means you won't pick them out; you need flat conditions, a scope, and a bit of patience on a cold jetty.

The Long-tailed Duck — birders of a certain age still call it “Oldsquaw,” a name officially dropped — is built for a life at sea. It dives deeper than almost any duck, regularly to 100 feet and recorded far deeper, and spends more of each day underwater than on the surface, working the bottom for crustaceans and molluscs.

It has one of the most complicated moult sequences of any waterfowl, cycling through several distinct plumages a year, so a winter flock off Rye can look like several different birds: the pattern of black, white, and warm brown shifts bird to bird and month to month. The drake’s central tail feathers and the small round head with a dark cheek smudge are the constants.

Seawatch etiquette: dress for ten degrees colder than the forecast, and give the raft time to drift into range.