Surf Scoter

About the Surf Scoter

The Surf Scoter is a stocky sea duck. The drake is velvet black with bold white patches on the forehead and nape and a swollen, clown-patterned bill of orange, white, and black. Hens and young birds are dark brown with two pale smudges on the face and a dark cap.

Scoters feed by diving in rough water, prying mussels and other shellfish off the bottom and swallowing them whole to be crushed in the gizzard. On the ocean they ride the breakers and dive through the face of incoming waves - the habit behind the name.

The Surf Scoter breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and winters along both ocean coasts. Texas sits at the southern edge of its range: small numbers appear each winter along the coast, in bays and off jetties, and a stray occasionally turns up on a large inland reservoir, usually a young bird.