Many people think of spring as the ideal time to find, view and photograph ducks.

Although spring can be a wonderful season for waterfowl, it is actually a migratory season for ducks when many return to breeding grounds farther north than Colorado.

Summer — and specifically early summer — is when the ducklings are abundant and running around the many parks, lakes and marshes of Colorado.

Again, a wonderful season, but ducks are past their prime plumage, with little need during the summer for vibrant displays of feathers. The big need for more subtle appearances to hide nest locations, and older feathers continue to suffice to save energy for raising young.

Winter, however, offers an abundance of duck species in Colorado. It is also the time when most of the duck species present their most stunning plumage — after their fall migration when new feathers are necessary for safe travel and before the colorful feathers are used for courtship in spring.

In Colorado, dozens of species that bird enthusiasts rarely find in summer can be abundant in locations and volume.

For example, the animated common goldeneye, with its head flip technique to attract a female partner, can be found in Lake Estes as well as many watering holes along the Front Range.

In winter, when they look for any open body of water, the goldeneye travels as far south as western Texas and southern Arizona and New Mexico to relax for the winter season before heading back to its nesting grounds in Alaska and Canada.

Another frequent bird in Colorado during the winter is the redhead. This medium-sized diving duck is a stunning bird with a dark rust color head, while its body is mostly black, gray and white mixed into a delicate pattern.

A fun Colorado avian visitor in winter is the American wigeon.

A small dabbling duck with a bright green ear patch that extends to the back of the head on the male, this bird’s distinct call — a squeaky, high-pitched whistle — make it unmistakable as it fly’s overhead.

The next month will continue to be an ideal time to search out unique species of northern ducks before they start to return north in March.

Using an app like eBird, a crowd-sourced tool for mobile phones, gives bird watchers the opportunity to share their sightings for anyone with an account. Accounts are free, and the app is produced by the world-renowned experts on all things bird at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And you don’t need to share information to use the information. Anyone registered can also use the Explore feature to find local birds and birding hotspots.

Another helpful resource is to sign up for the Colorado rare bird alert notifications. Also produced by eBird, this daily communication provides a summary of the latest sightings of notable birds throughout Colorado. Sign up for this notification at ebird.org.

For those that like the rare bird report, there is also a Facebook group with the same name.

If technology isn’t desired and the old-fashioned way of binoculars and exploring is preferred for finding ducks, here are a few destinations near Estes Park and in norther Colorado that often have a wide variety of ducks to view with spotting scopes and binoculars: Pella Crossing in Hygiene, Fossil Creek Reservoir in Fort Collins and Windsor Lake in Windsor. And Lake Estes in Estes Park is always a great place to connect with nature by looking for visiting ducks, like scaups and goldeneyes.