Red-breasted Merganser Dives

A male red-breasted merganser, Mergus serrator.

February is a good month to look for red-breasted merganser ducks in New York City's East River. Today I saw the one in these two photos. I wrote about another on a February Sunday in 2011. Click here to read the previous blog.

The red-breasted merganser is a diving duck; it mainly eats fish, which it dives under water to catch.  Below is a picture of this duck's energetic dive, just before he disappeared.

Click to enlarge. 

Hooded Mergansers

A pair of hooded mergansers, Lophodytes cucullatus, in the foreground. The female on the left has a cinnamon colored crest. The male's white hood is expandable. 

Running on the water for takeoff. 

Click to enlarge. 

Birdwatchers call them "hoodies." I saw this pair and lots more of them at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, New Jersey, on the day after Thanksgiving. The little ducks are about 20 inches long, have a wingspan of about two feet, and weigh between one and two pounds. They are found throughout the eastern half of the United States and in the Pacific northwest year round, and in various parts of North America for winter and breeding. (Click here to see a map if you are interested.) Hoodies are diving ducks, likely to disappear while you are watching them and reappear at a distance in any direction. Underwater they catch fish, crustaceans, and insects, or pick up mollusks and vegetation.

Red Eyes!

I was walking along the East River in Manhattan yesterday, between the helicopter pier and the Brooklyn Bridge, when I noticed a brightly colored duck bobbing in the wake of pleasure boats and water taxis. As it came closer I recognized a male red-breasted merganser, Mergus serrator.

Closer still, you can see this bird's striking features. It has bright red eyes, an iridescent green head with a shaggy double-pointed crest, and a long thin orange bill.

Its breast is kind of red but most of us would call it brown -- a reddish brown that I think of as ornithological red. So I can't help wondering how this bird came to be called a red-breasted merganser. Picture the moment: Hmmm, should we call it red-eyed? Shaggy-haired? Orange-billed? Wait, I've got it! Let's name it for its least distinguishing and most easily confused feature!

The Merganser part makes sense, though. It is from Latin words mergas, meaning diver, and anser, meaning goose (close relative). They are divers, as the name says. It is easy to lose track of one as it dives and resurfaces far away.

And what is it doing in the East River looking incongruous? Red-breasted mergansers mainly eat fish, so it could have been looking for lunch. (The orange beak is serrated and helps to catch and hold prey.) They spend their winters in coastal waters, like the East River. They can be found on both coasts of the United States in winter and almost anywhere inland while migrating in spring and fall. They breed during summer in very far northern Canada and at high northern latitudes around the world.

This bird will spend the summer in the tundra or in a wild northern forest lake far from human civilization. What a contrast to spending a winter Saturday in New York City. How strange it must seem to sit amid the helicopter, boat, and car traffic while sirens wail and a photographer snaps shots from the shore.