We've only seen a couple of pairs of bufflehead ducks this spring. They are compact little divers. A closer look at the male reveals a glossy green and purple with the white patch but from a distance it appears to be black.
Here's some cool historical info from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology if you're interested: "Bufflehead fossils from the late Pleistocene (about 500,000 years ago) have been found in Alaska, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Washington. One California fossil that resembles a modern Bufflehead dates to the late Pliocene, two million years ago."
