54. White-winged Scoter (Melanitta deglandi/stejnegeri)

Due partly to the paucity of White-winged Scoter photos that I can reproduce here with the permission of the author, and the need for me to separate these 2 subspecies from Velvet Scoter (thanks to Tim for alerting me to this in an earlier post!), my drawing is slightly different today. I've copied the illustrations from Collins to highlight the differences to myself.

White-winged Scoter sketches.

The main difference between deglandi (northern North America) and stejnegeri (East Siberia) in males at least is the bill pattern and shape. stejnegeri has a more angular bill knob and a yellow strip on the side of its bill, with less black along the edge of the lower mandible.