Common Merganser, Male

[ApS]

Yesterday, this guy detected me even though I'd snuck up while he was under a dock. He'd then made made a hasty retreat, even leaving a wake!

These males are commonly mistaken for a Loon, but the mergansers are much smaller, and routinely "fish" in much shallower water than Loons.

Kinda handsome, but not often seen after mating. The male Mergansers take no care of the offspring.

[ishoot308]

I think the male "hooded" merganser is much prettier! There is a lot of them on Winni!

Edited to add; I did not take this picture! Stolen from the web!

[fatlazyless]

Believe that type duck is actually a buffle head, and not a merganser?

[ApS]

Originally Posted by fatlazyless

Believe that type duck is actually a buffle head, and not a merganser?

Although ID'ing ducks is difficult with hybrids being fairly common, my Googling confirms that's a Hooded Merganser—I'd written of them earlier, as follows:

Originally Posted by ApS

A couple of diving ducks arrived at my dock Thursday, and had me stumped as to what they were.

After seeing their very narrow bills, and watching them pick up a half-dozen crayfish from the bottom in just a few minutes, the name "merganser" came to mind. No bird book at hand listed the colors on these particular birds; fortunately, there are only three possible Merganser species to choose from—worldwide.

It turns out they were juvenile Hooded Mergansers, which have a yellow lower bill, white undersides, and a "crew cut" appearance of their normally long tufts of head and neck feathers.

They are extremely fast flyers, smaller, and not as shy as our usual Common Merganser—but are still wary. The yellow bill is the only clue as to their age: the adults have all-black bills.

This is the appearance of the juvenile Hooded Mergansers that appeared Thursday:




The adult female is similar to the above; however, this is how the male appears in April, as they skirt the edges of Lake Winnipesaukee near Ice-Out, usually with their mate:



They appear at Florida lakes too. Except for the rare sighting (here and there), they only appear during their migration travels.

Pretty cool, huh?

As to "extremely fast fliers"—If you see a duck go by that appears to have been shot out of a cannon—you've just witnessed a Hooded Merganser in flight!

More...

[SteveA]

definitly not a buffalo . here are some images of a buffalo head.

[tis]

For years we had a box for the wood ducks but the hooded merganzers took it over. One year in June, I had the very exciting experience of seeing nine of the babies drop out of the box to the water as mommy was kicking them out of the house. The box disappeared a couple of years ago (with the ice I think) and we never replaced it.

[ishoot308]

Originally Posted by tis

For years we had a box for the wood ducks but the hooded merganzers took it over. One year in June, I had the very exciting experience of seeing nine of the babies drop out of the box to the water as mommy was kicking them out of the house. The box disappeared a couple of years ago (with the ice I think) and we never replaced it.

That's a very common problem with wood duck boxes, many of them get taken over by hooded mergansers. I used to put out and check 75 boxes a year at different wetland locations in southern NH. When we checked and cleaned them in the winter it was easy to tell how many had been taken over by the color of the cracked shell. Merganser eggs are glossy white whereas wood duck eggs are beige in color.

Dan