One of lake life’s little pleasures is seeing families of
ducks paddle past the pier. Usually on our lake it’s mother mallards with their
clutches. Last evening it was (as best I can tell from a retrospective look at
a field guide) a hooded merganser mama with her brood.
As I stepped from the trees onto the pier, carrying my
tackle box, half a dozen little ones scooted off to the left along the
bulrushes. The ruddy-crested mother, meanwhile, made certain I noticed her,
paddling frantically off to the right, a classic maneuver meant to lure a
predator away from the young.
When I simply stood watching, she came back and repeated the
maneuver, the brood by this time well out of sight, probably up in the shoreline
brush. Still not satisfied, mama swam around and once more tried to engage me
in a chase. She continued her act while I untied the boat, stepped in and
started the outboard, whereupon she scooted some 50 yards on an acute angle out
from shore. As I backed out from the pier, now directly between her and where
the young had gone, she swam a tight circle, watching me. Only after I had
traveled well out onto the water did she lift off and, in a flicker of wings,
skim the waves to rejoin her brood.
It was a treat not just to see the show but to find out it
was (probably) a hooded merganser, smallest of the merganser family, a
secretive species not seen all that often (I had never seen one before). Which
varieties of ducks frequent your lake? Certainly more than just mallards. It’s
nice to keep a field guide handy for identifying ducks, especially during the
migrations.
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