The Harlequin Duck with its extravagantly coloured plumage is named for the colourful character in early Italian pantomime. The male has a slate blue body accented with white and black markings and chestnut flanks. Females are a dull brown with three white spots on the sides of their heads.
Harlequins breed on turbulent, upland rivers and streams and winter along rugged coastlines.
In spring they congregate at river mouths and estuaries, waiting for the rivers to thaw. Except when breeding, Harlequins are gregarious, feeding, molting and wintering on traditional grounds in flocks. Harlequins winter along the rugged coasts of southern Newfoundland, the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, in the Bay of Fundy off New Brunswick, the Gulf of Maine to as far south as the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The eastern population of the Harlequin Duck was listed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada in 1990 because its numbers have declined to a point below minimum viable population size. Their habit of staging, molting, and wintering in flocks in traditional areas leaves the species vulnerable to human disturbance, oil pollution, and interruption of the food supply.