Test Your Waterfowl ID Skills!

With their distinct, rusty colored heads and nearly identical plumages, male Redhead and Canvasback ducks can be challenging to tell apart, especially from a distance. The females, with their similarly muted brown plumages, are equally tricky. However, a closer look at the subtle details will reveal key differences in their features. Check out our keys to ID below, then test your skills with Bird Academy’s Snap ID tool. Before you know it, you’ll be identifying these ducks like an expert!

A duck with a red head, black chest, black bill, and gray body floats in water. — Male Redhead

A canvasback with a reddish-brown head, bright red eye, and sloping black bill floats on water. Its neck is brown, its chest is black, and its body is white. — Male Canvasback

ID Clue	Male Redhead	Male Canvasback
Size	Medium	Large
Head	Round, puffy red head and neck with a steep forehead slope and yellow eyes.	Brownish-red head and neck, peaked crown, gently sloped forehead, red eyes.
Bill	Shorter, slightly sloped blue-gray bill with black tip.	Longer, sloped triangular black bill.
Color	Dark, grayish back.	Light, whitish back.

A light brown duck with a black bill floats on water, its body is pale gray. — Female Canvasback

ID Clue	Female Redhead	Female Canvasback
Size	Medium	Large
Head	Round, tan-brown head with a steep forehead slope.	Peaked, light brown head, white throat.
Bill	Shorter, slightly sloped blue-gray bill with black tip.	Longer, sloped triangular black bill.

Lighting and perspective can sometimes make spotting these visual cues tricky. See if you can identify them in the quiz below. You can replay the quiz as many times as you like. Each time you hit “Play Again,” you’ll have new photo matchups to practice on. Just click “Start Snap ID Challenge” to get started!

Test Your Waterfowl ID Skills

Frank Lin | Macaulay Library

Practice makes identification a snap.

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Waterfowl, particularly ducks, can easily confuse birders due to their similar appearance and shared habitats. Color can vary among male, female, and immature plumages, making identification even trickier. Learning relatively consistent traits among males, females, and juveniles is helpful, especially if you focus on the head and bill shape, which tend to vary less than plumages.

Redhead duck swimming, with lighter body and darker head. — Redhead

Canvasback duck swimming, showing brown head and brown/white streaked body. — Canvasback

Canvasback duck with red head, white body, and wings raised above water surface. — Canvasback

Redhead duck with red head, grey body, and wings outstretched in water. — Redhead

Ready to sharpen your waterfowl ID skills? Our self-paced, online course, Be a Better Birder: Duck and Waterfowl Identification, provides essential ID strategies, including the “Where is the White?” method for quick identification and tips for using behavior to distinguish dabblers from divers. Plus, you’ll get insider keys for identifying common waterfowl all across the U.S. and Canada. You’ll even learn how to distinguish non-duck species of waterfowl, like geese and loons! Dive into a free sample lesson for firsthand techniques, tips, and insights that make this course an invaluable resource for birders of at any level!

Be a Better Birder: Duck and Waterfowl Identification Confidently identify ducks and waterfowl through expert tips and fun practice tools with Kevin McGowan as your guide.

$59.99