Stejneger's scoter
species of duck
Stejneger's scoter (Melanitta stejnegeri), also known as the Siberian scoter, is a large sea duck. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek melas "black" and netta "duck".
Taxonomy
Stejneger's scoter was described by the American ornithologist Robert Ridgway in 1887 and given the binomial name Oidemia stejnegeri. The specific name was chosen to honour the Norwegian born ornithologist Leonhard Stejneger.
It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the white-winged scoter. It was suggested to be a full species, according to a new study, and the species were split in 2019.
Description
There are a number of differing characteristics of Stejneger's scoter and the white-winged scoter. Males of the white-winged scoter have browner flanks, dark yellow coloration of most of the bill and a less tall bill knob, approaching the velvet scoter. The male Stejneger's scoter has a very tall knob at the base of its mostly orange-yellow bill. The males of both species are very similar and best distinguished by head shape; White-winged scoters tend to have "two-stepped" profile between the bill and the head, compared to the long "Roman nose" profile of Stejneger's scoter similar to that of a common eider.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Stejneger's scoter” is species of duck. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stejneger's, scoter and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55111784. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1887 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stejneger's scoter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.