Of a Feather: The ducks light up the pond

By BILL CHAISSON
By Bill Chaisson

We were driving up NH Route 114 in Sutton and passed by Russell Pond, which was entirely ice-free. My better half said innocently, “Look. Ducks.” Of course I dropped her off at her destination and doubled back to Russell Pond.

There were quite a few ducks on the water. It was late in the afternoon and the light was low and the wind was non-existent. The pond was a sheet of dark glass and the light was behind me, shining on the plumage of the waterfowl and bringing out all the colors that are normally muted or reduced to shades of gray.

I looked at the south end of the pond first, where there were more birds. I counted 9 male ring-necked ducks and 3 females. This lopsided gender ratio is usual in ducks for the same reason that there are usually more women than men in human populations: women are more robust. In mammals, it is females that have matched XX chromosomes. In birds, males have ZZ sex chromosomes and females are ZW. Ratios are equal at birth, but fewer ZW animals survive the first year.

There was also a pair of ducks that I initially took for female ruddy ducks; they were holding their tails at an angle in the air. Sibley’s field guide showed me the tails of ruddy ducks are longer than what I observed and even the female “batter-scoots” are more strikingly plumaged than the brown ducks on Russell Pond. Female ruddies are brownish-gray with a broad dark stripe across their lighter cheeks.

The two ducks in question were small female ring-neck ducks, which have brown bodies, grayer heads and necks with a light area around the base of the bill. More than one birdwatcher has wondered why this species is so-named, as the bills of both males and females have prominent white rings behind the dark tip and at the base. The chestnut ring around the neck of the male is so faint I couldn’t even see it in the perfect light of this spring afternoon.

The ring-necks were diving repeatedly, feeding before they took to the sky to migrate through the night. In contrast, two pairs of common mergansers were practically lolling about in the shallows at the south end of the pond. One of the males had actually hauled itself up onto a half-submerged tree branch and was standing almost as upright as a penguin. These birds are 25 inches long, about the height of a mid-sized penguin.

Two pairs of smaller, more fidgety hooded mergansers floated near the far shore. Mergansers remain paired up through the winter, while the diving ducks do not pair up until they reach their breeding grounds. Although they may remain nearby, neither the common nor the hooded merganser are likely to remain on Russell pond; both of them prefer to breed along woodland streams, placing their nests high up in tree cavities.

In contrast, the flock of ring-necks was more likely moving on; most of them breed from Nova Scotia northward. However, the species began to breed in northern New Hampshire in the late 1940s and was found nesting in scattered localities in southern New Hampshire after the early 1960s. They remain in loose flocks like the one I saw until they reach a suitable pond, pair up, and build their nests in a reedy margin.

As I watched, the sun dropped lower and the colors of the ducks’ feathers began to really pop. I could actually see the blue-gray on the bills of the ring-necked ducks. The white “spur” of the male looked like a sharp dorsal fin dividing the gray flanks from the glossy purple breast.

The common mergansers decided to swim north across the pond. As they emerged from the shadowed south end and into the full sunlight, the deep green heads of the males contrasted boldly with their bright red dagger-like beaks. They were, however, riding too low in the water to reveal the salmon blush of their chests and sides. The females have slate gray bodies and dark rufous heads with a prominent white patch beneath and behind their bills. Even these more subdued colors seemed pellucid; the gray like a summer sky just before a storm. The males emitted deep croaks as they made their stately way across the glass-like surface.

At the north end of Russell Pond, there were four more male common mergansers and two females plus four male ring-necked ducks. The mergansers at this end were foraging, diving at regular intervals, while this group of ring-necked ducks seemed content to bask in the sun while floating close to shore.

In addition to all these probable migrants, a pair of mallards and a pair of Canada geese also loitered along the shores of Russell Pond. These birds are both recent arrivals in New Hampshire. While the Canada goose story is one in which our species played a role, mallards seemed to have expanded their range into the Northeast from the Midwest on their own.

They were rarely even seen as migrants until the 1920s. It wasn’t until 1952 that a wild mallard nested in New Hampshire at Errol. According to Birds of New Hampshire, over 16,000 pairs were estimated to be breeding in the state during the 2009-2010 counting period.

When I lived in Saranac Lake I watched the migrating ducks swim around at the edges of the ice floes in Flower Lake. Russell Pond was ice free last Sunday and quiet. As we drove north past Gile Pond in North Sutton, we found it ice free but roughened by small white caps and quite duck free. There were still remnants of ice in the shadowy tree-hung corners of Tannery Pond in Wilmot and on Tuesdays I saw two pairs of hooded mergansers making their way along the edges of it, chasing each other around as they went.

Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher from the age of 10. He is a former managing editor of the Eagle Times and now lives and works in the town of Wilmot. Contact him at [email protected].