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Community Corner

On the Fly – New Duck on the Pond

A look at the wealth of bird life in and around Martinez, what to look for and where to look for it

 

On this first birthday of “On the Fly,” I was going to write about the cycles of nature and the comfort they bring. One year after the first few columns were published, stilts, avocets, and various are once again visiting or wintering in Martinez. I love the buffleheads and goldeneyes and canvasbacks and ruddy ducks. Like old friends, they get a little closer to my heart with each passing year, and they bring color and wonder to the winter months.

So as I said, I was going to write about the joys of seeing the same old birds every year, but then a new duck came along: the hooded merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus. This diminutive duck is distinguished by its fabulous crest. On the males it’s puffy and white with a black edge along the back of the head. On the females it’s reddish brown and a little scraggly, but lovely when the sun is shining through it. The male hooded merganser is brown, black, and white with bold stripes and patches. The female is grayish brown with a white belly.

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Another distinguishing feature of the merganser is its “sawbill.” Ducks have lamellae—projections like the teeth of a comb—on their bills that function like sieves as they filter water through them. On mergansers the lamellae are serrated, which allows them to get a good grip on the fish, frogs, insects, shellfish, and other large invertebrates that make up their diet. They feed by diving and swimming underwater, where they have excellent eyesight. Except for a very low-pitched mating call and the whistling sound their wings make in flight, they are silent. 

The other two types of merganser, common and red-breasted, are found in North America and also in parts of Europe and Asia. Only hooded mergansers restrict their native habitat to North America. In spring they breed in the northern US and Canada, nesting in holes in trees near water. In winter they fly south, in search of food and ice-free water. All three mergansers have been spotted at this time of year around the San Francisco Bay and even in Martinez, but I’ve never seen them on the pond at the waterfront before.

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If you’ve been wanting to check out the huge numbers of migrating birds in the Sacramento Valley, this would be a good time to go. Chico’s annual Snow Goose Festival will take place January 26 to 29, with workshops and field trips in the 35,000-acre Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex. I visited the Willows branch of the refuge recently and saw not only masses of snow geese but tundra swans and row after row of white-faced ibis wafting across the sky at sunset. The snow geese congregate by the thousands and stage massive lift-offs at dusk. Their cackling fills the air and the sound of their flapping wings is like the roar of a crowd in a stadium. It’s an exhilarating experience.

Wild Turkey update: This year’s Thanksgiving “Poultry Slam” episode of This American Life included a segment about a ferocious turkey that caused a lot of trouble in its Long Island neighborhood. You can hear it here or find the transcript here (go to “Act Two”). It seems that feeding wild turkeys is a really bad idea. It causes them not only to lose their fear of humans but in some cases to become aggressive. As the California Department of Fish and Game explains here, “Feeding Wild Turkeys Will Bring Problems Home to Roost.”

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