Ruddy Ducks in the Bay

It’s cold, crisp and clear…and when a girl needs an excuse to stumble around outside in the thigh deep snow…what better reason than to check on the birds (and feed the goats a couple of orange peels from last night)?  I’m a neophyte when it comes to shore birds but when I got a Google alert from someone in Rockland saying that he saw ruddy ducks in Searsport Harbor and a horned lark…I went out to see…and they were around this morning!

Ruddy ducks are look plump, happy and completely unaware of the ice cold water surrounding them…when I did a bit of research on them this morning, they were all over the internet with blue beaks (That’s the picture I pasted into the top left corner of this post)…the one I saw looked more like this…and if anything was going to be blue, it should be a duck in this freezing weather.  Could it be the difference between boy and girl ducks?  Anyone know?