I stopped by the Charles today and spent some time watching the odd goldeneye again. Fortunately, today there were a total of 5 goldeneye along the river, including another female that would occasionally be close enough to get a photo of both in the same frame.
Here’s three more photos of the bird, twice with the male and once with the female for comparison:
Note on the last one that I cut most of the water between them out and then made a bit of a mess with the clone stamp fixing my quick cutting and pasting, but that’s one photo.
Also remember that these are all hosted on Flickr and clicking on any of them and then All Sizes will blow them up to the original size.
I’m not seeing much of a difference in bill structure, so I’m leaning towards Common. And since every shot shows a slightly different head shape, I’m not sure that the one with the strong peak is actually the normal shape.
Then again, I just took a look at Ted Floyd’s new field guide and the Barrow’s there looks pretty close. Via Amazon, search for goldeneye and then go to page 53.
Update: I heard from Jim McCoy who was quite sure it’s a Barrow’s. And just now I came across Sean McMahon’s series, which seem to show the bill and head shape quite definitively.
Last update: Simon Perkins agrees on Barrow’s, so I’m done questioning.