On January 25, Bill Bouton found and photographed an apparent Common Scoter in the Crescent City boat basin in Del Norte county, California. This is not only a first California record, but the first ABA Area record of this species, recently split from Black Scoter by the AOU.
Photo by Bill Bouton, used with permission
Crescent City is in far northern California. The closest major city is Portland, Oregon, about 330 miles to the north. San Francisco is 350 miles to the south. The bird has been seen in the Crescent City harbor, near the northwest side of Citizen’s Dock Road at the boast basin, where there is ample parking available. Since being reported to the listserv on 1/31 (Bouton was on the road and without resources to confirm his initial suspicions) it had been seen all day on 2/1.
Common Scoter was split from the North American Black Scoter (or American Scoter) by the BOU in 2005, a decision which was echoed by the AOU in 2010 by virtue of plumage differences (particularly among adult males), but also differences in vocalizations as well.
Common Scoter breeds across the north of Europe east to central Russia. Prior to this California bird the closest the species has come to North America is Greenland, which has a handful of records. In fact, this species has been long expected to show up at some point in the ABA Area, but the fact that it was first in California rather than somewhere in the northeast is certainly a surprise.
Appropriately, Tom Johnson wrote an article on identification of scoters, including Common Scoter, in the December 2014 issue of Birding magazine.