Male hooded merganser puts on show when courting

A male hooded merganser

Columbus Dispatch
March 5, 2017

NATURE
Jim McCormac

Signs of spring start materializing come mid-February, especially in mild winters like this one. Our first "wildflower," skunk cabbage, bursts from spring-fed mires. Buds begin to pop on elms and maples.

The earliest bees and flies appear, ready to tap nectar from pioneering spring flowers, such as harbinger-of-spring. Skunks become active, as your nose might have told you. And early birds become obvious: turkey vultures soaring overhead, killdeer yelling in the fields, and red-winged blackbirds teed up on shrubs.

As Mark Twain said, "It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is." And nothing expresses the testosterone-fueled vernal rush of hormones like male ducks. By this time of year, drakes are busily courting seemingly oblivious hens.

I recently visited a local patch new to me: Char-Mar Ridge Park, part of the Preservation Parks of Delaware County holdings. The centerpiece of the 128-acre property is a beautiful pond backed up by an aging dam. Anchored to the south shore is an excellent blind, or "hide" as the Brits would say.

Upon cresting the rise and spying the small lake, I saw a dozen hooded mergansers at the far end. Ducking into the blind and out of sight, I didn't have to wait long for the ducks to swim my way.

You might still be missing a vital part of Gaea if you've never clapped eyes on a drake hooded merganser. What it lacks in size is more than compensated for with its feathered finery. Vermiculated beige flanks are capped by a back and head of the deepest ebony. A snowy bib bordered by white slashes punctuates the sooty breast.

Topaz eyes stare inscrutably above a thin, sharply serrated bill — good for snaring slippery aquatic prey. Best of all, though, is the bird's crest. In repose, the merganser appears coiffed with a white, slicked-back mullet. But when aroused, he flips his topknot erect like a geisha's fan, completely transforming his look.

The hens are, by comparison, brown and drab. They do sport a shaggy topknot that would make a punk rocker proud. When the drakes come a courting, the females play coy and act uninterested. The studs let it rip, fanning crests and pumping heads, throwing their bills skyward while emitting weird burping groans.

These are the steps that must be taken to make little hooded mergansers.

And it can only be a good thing that there are ever more hooded mergansers, at least in this region. The first Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas was conducted from 1982 to 1987. Breeding Bird Atlas II ran from 2006 to 2011. Hooded mergansers increased by 92 percent between atlases.

A century ago, rampant deforestation, loss of wetlands, and the virtual disappearance of beavers hurt the mergansers. We've compensated for that early nature nihilism by helping to restore wetland-engineering beavers, rebuilding lost wetlands and allowing forests to rebound, which protects water quality.

Pivotal to the success of the hooded merganser are cavities, in which they place their nests. Dead and dying trees form some suitable holes, but the boom really began when people started erecting nest boxes for wood ducks. The hollow tubes worked just fine for mergansers, contributing greatly to their resurgence.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Further afield

Expect to see plenty of ducks, including hooded mergansers, at the 17th annual Shreve Migration Sensation in Wayne County on March 18. The event includes a variety of talks, plus field visits to the vast wetlands of Funk Bottoms and Killbuck Marsh. For details, visit www.shreveohio.com/migration-sensation.

Two ducks, gaudily beautiful

Last Saturday was the 13th annual Amish Bird Symposium in Adams County. As former co-organizer Roman Mast always joked: "What's an Amish Bird?"

I was able to make the scene, and hear several great talks. Several hundred birders attend, and the main attraction is great speakers. This year's cast featured Alexandra Forsythe, Mark Garland, Eric Ellis, and a triumvirate of great wildlife artists, DeVere Burt, John Agnew, and John Ruthven. The symposium is always in March. Put it on your calendar for next year.

The lure of signs of spring was strong for this winter-weary flatlander, so I stayed down there overnight and headed afield the following day.

While the weather was cold and rainy at times, there's no denying the first wildflowers their blooms. This is the tiny Harbinger-of-spring, Erigenia bulbosa, and it was coming on in force. I made this image when the temperature was 37 F. The little parsleys were pushing through the leaf litter in good numbers. Several other species of native wildflowers were also in bloom in the Ohio River counties. As were nonnative daffodils (which, quite sadly, would be recognized by FAR more people than gorgeous native flora like this Harbinger-of-spring).

As I made my way back north on State Route 104, which borders the mighty Scioto River, I noticed a small pack of Hooded Mergansers in a slackwater oxbow of the river. I wheeled back, found a good hiding hole, and waited for the birds to forget about my presence. They did, and eventually drifted near enough for some passable images.

A drake Hooded Merganser with hormones coursing through its body and hens to impress is a sight to behold. They flare that elegant black-trimmed white crest, which apparently impresses the ladies. Half a dozen drakes were strutting their stuff.

This spot turned out to be a real honey hole. I could see incoming fowl flying up the river long before they saw me, and thus was ready with the camera. As you may know, big rivers are essentially highways for birds, and all manner of species navigate along them. In short order I saw several species of ducks, Belted Kingfisher, two Bald Eagles, and more. A group of Green-winged Teal dropped into the oxbow, the males' musical albeit slightly raspy piping notes much reminiscent of spring peeper frogs.

At one point I heard the high-pitched squeals of a female Wood Duck, and glanced over to see this trio spring from the flooded bottomland woods. I trained my big lens on the fast-moving birds, and flubbed most shots. But this one is a keeper. The female is bookended by attentive drakes, both of whom are no doubt vying for her attention.

Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers look a lot alike in flight, if just seen as silhouettes. Both species are cavity-nesters with long tails, and the tail extends behind the wings about as far as the head and neck on the other side. But Wood Ducks typically hold their head and neck up, above parallel, and thus look somewhat wary and watchful in flight. Hooded Mergansers hold the head at or below parallel, and that habit coupled with their somewhat faster flight gives the birds more of a look of speedy purposefulness.

This image was grabbed with Canon's amazing 7D Mark II. If you're looking for a great bird camera, check into one of these. It was connected to the 500mm f/4 II lens with a 1.4x extender sandwiched between, and the whole rig was mounted on a tripod. Settings were f/6.3, ISO 500, 1/2000. The exposure compensation was +1.3 stops. Without exposing to the right, the birds would have come out looking like dark silhouettes. Upping the exposure also whitens the sky, which lends somewhat of a painterly feeling to the image.