I was out hunting big water here on Friday. I'm very good at ID'ing ducks in flight but I saw three ducks that I have no idea what they are I thought when they were coming in they were gads but as they got closer they looked like hen pins but you can't shoot pins here so I let them go and that's when they banked and turned their backs to me and no I'm completly lost as to what they were. They were about the same size as a gadwall, mallard, or pintail. They had the brown and black feathers like a hen mallard, white speculum like a gadwall, belly like a mallard or hen pin, and on their backs right where their wings attach to their backs there was a solid white patch on each side exactely like a goldeneye looks in flight. I have no idea what they were one guy told me they could've been white winged scooters but I looked at them and those aren't what they were. The only thing I found even remotly close was a drake oldsquaw but it didn't have the same color scheme like the white and black on the head. But if you look at one from the back in flight minus the long tail and replacing the black with brown that's what they looked like. I hope somone can give me some hlep on this cause it's really really bugging me. Hte only thing I can come up with is that they were a cross breed of some sort but there was 3 of them flying together that's a little to much conicidence to be an mix breed I think. Help please if you can. the only other one I can think they maybe is a Garganey but they looked almost to big to those. I dunno.

Merganser????

They could have been hen widgeon???

Im with steel on this one it was 3 hen wigeons because of the white patch on the wings

They weren't widgeon I'm 100% positive on that because the white patchs were in the completely wrong spot and they were to big to be hoods and didn't have the long beaks of the hoods or commons either.

wow ... i wish i coulda seen em .... but .... just guessin here .... could they may have been immature birds or in partial eclipse?

I dont know looked through my Field identification guide. Didnt see anything like that. I keep looking for something like that.

I too hunt in Minnesota and believe it or not I've shot 2 scoters (sp) before in this state. I talked to a CO and he said that some flocks get screwed up at times and end up in states where they don't normally belong. Turns out that 5 other groups reported shooting them too over the next 2 weeks in the same area so they must have stuck around for awhile but this was at least 5 years ago.
My 1st impression was that the ducks you saw where widgeons but if you are sure that they weren't then they could have been scoters or else some type of hybrid.

The more and more I think about it they had to be a hybrid of some kind. I've looked at almost every webiste I could find with different types of waterfowl and I can't find anything that looks like them. There's a few that look close but nothing exactely like those weird damn things. I'm kicking myself for not shooting one now. I've been out to the same spot 4 times after that and I haven't seen them again. I did see three surf scooters on Big Stone lake here about a week and a half ago and I talked to a guy down in Browns Valley how said he shot a Harlequin here a couple years ago on Lake Traverse. You just never know what my come through. It makes the hunt just that much more interesting.

It very well could be a hybrid I saw a mallard/pintail hybrid this summer and it was the most beautiful duck i have ever seen, just totally awesome.