I like this time of year because we end up seeing birds we don’t always see during the rest of the year. These are hooded mergansers.
This is a male merganser. The white on the head can be expanded into a “hood”. Hooded mergansers are the smallest of the mergansers.
The female is not as brightly marked, but is still interesting to look at.
This photo shows both the hooded mergansers on the left, and the wood ducks on the right.
