Black Scoter Identification Guide

Key Field Marks

• Adult male: entirely glossy black plumage from head to tail with no white patches anywhere on the body — the only scoter, and one of very few ducks, with completely unbroken black plumage.
• Bill shows a distinctive swollen, bulbous knob at the base, bright orange-yellow in adult males, contrasting sharply against the black plumage and face.
• Adult female: dark blackish-brown overall with a paler, contrastingly pale cheek and lower face against a darker cap, giving a distinctly "capped" appearance; bill is dark and lacks the male's knob.
• Overall a chunky, thick-necked sea duck typical of the scoter group, riding low in the water.

Behavior

• Forms large rafts on open coastal and offshore waters outside the breeding season, often associating with other scoter species.
• Dives to feed on mollusks, crustaceans, and other benthic invertebrates in coastal marine waters.
• Unusually vocal for a duck: males give musical, whistled calls, quite different from the quacks or grunts typical of most ducks.

Separating from Similar Species

• Surf Scoter: male shows bold white patches on the forehead and nape and a multicolored (black, white, orange, red) bill, unlike the uniformly black plumage and simple orange-knobbed bill of Black Scoter.
• White-winged Scoter: shows an obvious white wing patch visible both at rest and in flight, absent entirely in Black Scoter.
• Female Black Scoter is best told from female Surf and White-winged Scoters by its more sharply demarcated pale cheek against a dark cap, without the double pale face patches of female Surf Scoter or the white wing patch of White-winged Scoter.

Habitat & Range

• Breeds on tundra and taiga lakes in Alaska and northern Canada; a closely related form (sometimes considered the same species, Common Scoter) breeds across northern Eurasia.
• Winters along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, favoring nearshore ocean waters, bays, and inlets, typically in flocks.
• Rarely found far inland except as scattered migrants or occasional vagrants on large lakes.

Voice

• Males give a distinctive musical, whistled "curloo" or similar call, notably more melodious than the calls of most other ducks; females give lower, harsher notes.