Greater scaup been described by Serebrovskij in 1941 from fossils recovered at Binagady, Azerbaijan. The greater scaup's name may come from "scalp", a Scottish and Northern English word for a shellfish bed, or from the duck's mating call: "scaup scaup". A phylogenetic analysis of the diving ducks, examining the skeletal anatomy and skin, found that the greater and lesser scaups are each other's closest relatives, with the tufted duck as the next closest relative of the pair. The adult greater scaup is long with a wingspan and a body mass of . It has a blue bill and yellow eyes and is
Bird vocalization and prevent an energetically costly fight . In birds with song repertoires, individuals may share the same song type and use these song types for more complex communication. Some birds will respond to a shared song type with a song-type match (i.e. with the same song type). This may be an aggressive signal, however results are mixed. Birds may also interact using repertoire-matches, wherein a bird responds with a song type that is in its rival's repertoire but is not the song that it is currently singing. This may be a less aggressive act than song-type matching. Communication through bird