This diving duck has an adult male with a purplish head and long white crescent, while females have brown heads.
Adult males have a purplish-black head with a long white crescent. Females have gray bodies and brown heads.
Some female Barrow’s goldeneyes lay eggs in other females’ nests as well as their own. The female incubating such a nest warms eggs laid by more than one mother. In western Canada, females tended to place more eggs in nearby nests and in the nests of more closely related females.
In 2006 at Riske Creek, British Columbia, DNA was examined from 32 nesting females and 288 ducklings. Forty-three ducklings were assigned to a sampled female other than the nest owner. The number of eggs placed in another nest increased as the distance between nests decreased and the relatedness between females increased.
Distance and relatedness each contributed independently to this pattern. Nearby nests were used, and egg laying was also biased towards more closely related females. Within a single nest cavity, the nest owner’s eggs and eggs laid by another female can share incubation, and ducklings with different mothers hatch together.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
For the eastern Canadian population, logging of cavity-bearing trees, stocking fishless lakes and oil spills in wintering areas are conservation concerns. Introduced fish can reduce aquatic invertebrates used as food by the birds. Canada’s 2013 management plan identifies forestry practices that retain large living and dead nesting trees, protection of fishless lakes, and preparedness for oil spills in wintering and other important areas.