Description of Problem: 'scp' refuses to handle files with ':' in their names. No matter what quoting and escaping I tried it was getting really confused. The only workaround if I want to keep names, time stamps and/or permits which came to mind was to use tar, or similar, to stdout, and pass resulting stream through ssh to an extracting tar on the other end. Seeing my wife to do that would be interesting. :-) Smells like a "generic" bug in arguments handling by 'scp' not mentioned on its manpage.
try a "./" before the filename. ex. scp ./blah:blah server: scp server:./blah:blah backhome
Yes, indeed both 'scp ./blah:bla.txt ...' and 'scp ./blah\:bla.txt ...' worked as intended. After other quoting attempts failed this trick did not come to my mind. :-)
The workaround works. Otherwise try reporting upstream.