Today's Bird: Ruddy Duck

Today's bird is the Ruddy Duck!  The Ruddy Duck, is to date, my favorite duck I've seen.  They're diving ducks with a flat tail.  They start out kind of brown, with black stripes on their faces, but as they get older and into breeding plumage, they get a blue bill and a cool, bandit-like mask like this one here.  Sometimes, it's tough to get a good picture of one because they're always diving down (rather than flipped, backside up, like other ducks) and coming back up someplace else. I took this picture in January of this year at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco.