Wild About the City » Exploring nature in the urban environment

Another huge thrill this week at the bay. Went down to check on the ducks on what seemed (at first) like a relatively calm day, wind-wise. So I was surprised to hear the roar of the waves before I actually saw them.

I had actually intended to have a brisk walk out to the end of the peninsula (aka the peanut) to get a wee bit of exercise before work. But the waves captivated me and I didn’t get as far as I intended. There were huge swells out on the open water of the lake, and when the waves came in they were crashing into the shore with huge force, sending gigantic sprays of water up onto the rocks nearly onto the path. I was careful to keep my camera equipment out of the spray raining down.

Looking out to the swells and crashing waves, where there were dozens and dozens of ducks congregated — buffies, longtails and scaups. I saw some ducks that looked at first like common mergansers. But a closer inspection with my binoculars revealed that they were actually red-breasted mergansers. Hugely exciting for me as it was the first time I had ever seen these Arctic ducks at our bay.

Fascinating avian fact: Red-breasted mergansers are VERY fast ducks, able to reach speeds of 130 kilometres per hour. (Source: Waterfowl of Eastern North American, by Chris G. Early; Firefly  Books, 2005.) Wiki actually says that people claim these ducks to be the fastest bird in level flight. (Although Wiki goes on to say that the white-throated needletail may be faster, with recorded speeds of up to 170 kilometres per hour.)

Fastest or not, these spikey-haired amusing-looking mergansers are certainly among the most beautiful of all the water birds.  There were dozens of pairs of them, as well as many common (American) mergansers, and  all were busily a’courting.  I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

In the picture to the left, you can see two males at the beginning of their courtship ritual, a dance repeated hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. The ritual is called the salute-curtsy: the males point their beaks upwards, then dip their breast forward deeply into the water, while their back end rises out of the water. The males do this displaying behaviour in small groups for the benefit of the females nearby.

The mergansers were displaying an equally fascinating behaviour regarding feeding, using the crashing waves as a kind of shortcut to dinner. They floated out on the heavy swells, then, at the exact moment the wave would crest and fall over, the ducks dove into the centre of the watery maelstrom — presumably grabbing their prey  — likely fish or crustaceans this time of year, underwater. Their bright orangey-red beaks have sharply serrated edges to assist them in capturing their prey, hence their species name, serrator.

You can sort of see the behaviour I’m talking about in the picture below, which I snapped just as the wave was breaking. In the centre of the photo you can just see the orange beak of one of the males diving under as the weight of the breaking water is about to fall on him.

Hope these migrants are still around when I get back to the bay on my next outing. © BCP 2011

Wild about the City has been on hiatus for two months, attempting to straighten out major computer snafus. We might be sorted out . . . don’t want to push our luck too hard, but hoping for the best. So, with apologies for the long absence between posts, herewith an attempt at an update.

And an exciting one, too, for the avid duck watchers in our midst.

Down at the bay, (Ashbridge’s, that is) huge rafts of ducks have been present for the past several weeks. We have been blessed with a wonderful assortment: hundreds of our usual homebody mallards (still wonderful, for all their commonplaceness); scores of gadwalls, long-tails, buffies, goldies and scaups.

Lately, male American mergansers have been adding their elegance to the mix. The female mergansers stay in our bay  in huge numbers all winter. But sometimes it’s hard to see even one of their mates. Not now, though. There are dozens of males gliding about silently, looking like sleek waiters wearing fiery orange bowties.  The male mergansers stay annoyingly far out in the bay, way too far for even my longest lens to reach properly. So, until I can convince one of them to venture closer to shore, I am male merganserless — in the picture department.

But yesterday, a kind fellow birder approached me on the path out by the peanut and asked if I had seen the canvasbacks. . . Canvasbacks? I asked, quite dumbfounded. I had not seen a one all winter.  I got out my binoculars to scan the raft of ducks more closely — and there were, indeed, two pairs of ducks that  I hadn’t realized were there. But they weren’t canvasbacks (Aythya valisineria). They were redheads. Close cousins. Same genus, in fact — Aythya americana. With their huge red heads, yellow eyes and blue-and-black scaup-like bills, completely unmistakeable for anything else.

Hope you enjoy seeing the handsome redheads above.

See you on the trail!

© WATC 2011

Wild About The City is struggling with computer problems and is unable to do frequent site updates. ARGGGHHH!

While I am working to straighten out the digital mess I have found myself in, I will try to at least post a couple of pictures that don’t require much in the way of computer labour…Tonight, I thought I just better post SOMETHING! So here’s a recent picture I took of a male gadwall, (Anas strepera) just being his gorgeous gadwall self in the inner bay at Ashbridge’s.

You can see both from the general shape of his body, bill and feet that he is a close relative — a cousin, really — of our very common mallard ducks, (Anas platyrhynchos).

Isn’t he lovely?

© BCP 2010