BY Neil Stalter

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On virtually every birdwalk in Grand Harbor, someone will ask, “What's the name of that little duck with the fancy white hat?”

 

They come every winter often in good numbers to our sanctuary. Among the smallest of our migrating guests, darting around our ponds and diving for crustaceans and water-bugs, that little duck is the Hooded Merganser. The male sports a great fan-shaped white crest, way outsized for an 18” duck. His princely majesty shows in one of John Audubon's greatest masterpieces – a print that hangs over our fireplace.

 

Our Hooded Mergansers are often spotted with other diving ducks, including Blue-Wing Teals and Coots. Their cousins, the Common Merganser and Red-breasted Merganser, seldom venture this far south in their winter travels. The Hooded female has a nasty little trick known to birders who study breeding: she will frequently drop her eggs (up to 20 per brood) in another duck's nest. The unsuspecting hostess will end up tending quite a mixed brood.

 

Like other freshwater ducks, Mergansers actually build their nests away from water. Their popular choice is an abandoned woodpecker hole which the female carefully lines with down, twigs and leaves. Breeding takes place in their summer grounds from the Chesapeake north into Canada and west past the Rockies. As a beginning birder along the Elk River in Maryland, I mistook the low groan of a Hooded Merganser for just another bullfrog warming his morning vocals. Their calls are muffled and indistinct but clear enough to reach their mates and offspring.

 

In flight, this bird cuts a derring-do silhouette. It really appears to fly faster than it should. The optics of sleek bodies and swift wingbeats make for an illusion of powerful speed. As April dawns along the Florida coast, the Hooded Merganser begins to gird for its week-long flight back north – most of our snowbirds alight in the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states. They take our best wishes and with them  a bit of winter's bright smile.