Bird Outside My Hotel Room

Last night, as we were coming home from the grocery store, I saw a clutch of ducks at the pond that I’d never seen before. They had blue? bills and red? eyes and were buff brown and darker brown. The RLA refused to make a detour for me, but this morning on the way to work, we pulled through. I only managed one blurry photo on the i-phone, but I think, possibly, this is a ruddy duck. Something new for my life list. But IS it a ruddy duck? Can anyone out there recognize this fellow?

And on another note entirely, is anybody out there surprised to find Halliburton’s dirty fingers in the oil rig disaster in the Gulf? I thought not.