By Christy Solo – ONPA 1st Place Award Winner for Best Local Column
This week’s crawly is a swimmy, divy, flappy. Meet the hooded merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). We’ll call them “hoodies” for short.
There are so many cool things to learn about hooded mergansers, it’s hard to know where to start.
Hoodies are the teeny cousins of our common mergansers (Mergus merganser). How teeny are they?
Common mergansers average 23.5 inches in length, hooded average a petite 17 inches.
In addition to being smaller than their common cousins, hoodies are much shier so they haven’t been studied as extensively.
That said, they are relatively easy to see here in our little corner of the world – just generally from a distance like “on the other side of the river.” They also tend to join in with flocks of other small diving ducks such as buffleheads, so keep a sharp eye out for a handful (four to six) of wee mowhawks in with a large flock of bufflehead (15-25). You may also spot them in their own small groups or incidentally alongside common mergansers. They won’t join in with a group of common, however.
Hoodies can also lower their hood/crest/mowhawk so look for their other most distinguishing feature – that pointy toothed merganser bill.
Of the three species of merganser who live in North America (the third is the red-breasted merganser – Mergus serrator), hoodies are the only ones who live in NA exclusively. Moreover, they only live in forested parts of the northeast and here in the northrwest. Lucky us!
Like their larger cousins, hoodies love a good meal of sushi. Unlike other mergansers, hoodies have a broader non-fish diet. In addition to small fish, hoodies also eat aquatic insects, amphibians (mostly frogs), mollusks and crustaceans – especially crayfish. Boy do they love crayfish (crawfish, mudbugs, rock lobsters, etc.)
Hoodies catch a meal by diving for it, using their excellent eyesight to spot their prey. Not only do hoodies have a thin nictating membrane (partially clear third eyelid), but they can also alter the refractive properties of their eyes through accomodative lens changes.
Humans do this too, but not many other ducks can. These accommodating changes are made by tightening or relaxing the ciliary muscles above and below the lens of the eye. When looking at a distant object the ciliary muscles relax, flattening the eye’s lens. For close up vision the muscles tighten, causing the lens to become rounder and thicker and bringing close-up objects into focus.
A hapless crayfish will never see a hoodie coming, but the hoodie can spot it from the surface and keep it in laser-sharp focus as they dive, dive, dive!
When it comes to hoodie courtship and duckling raising hoodie habits are chock full of fun facts.
First there’s the male hoodie’s elaborate courtship dance combo. Their dance moves include, Crest-raising, Head-shaking, Head-throws with Turn-the-back-of-the-head, Upward-stretch, Upward-stretch with Wing-flap and ritualized Drinking. Who among us cannot relate?
Pictured is the most elaborate move, the head throw. The head toss is accompanied by a frog-like call, and the finishing move is to turn their head away from the female (possibly from embarrassment).
Sure, our hoodie boys look ridiculous, but clearly it works as we keep getting hoodie ducklings each season.
While hoody couples are monogamous, when it comes to nesting and caring for the kiddos, it’s all up to the female hoodies. They are cavity nesters, so will nest in tree hollows or even nest boxes which can be 50 feet off the ground. This also explains why you may see hoodies standing way up on tree branches during breeding season.
The bitty baby hoodies make a flappy leap from the nest to the ground way below just one day after hatching. If they’re lucky their nest was close to water, if they aren’t they may have to walk up to one-half mile on their teeny duckling legs until they get their first swim.
Female hoodies can lay up to 13 eggs in a clutch, but they also practice brood parasitism – meaning some females won’t bother with their own nest but will just lay their eggs in the nest of another hoodie. Moreover they may lay their eggs in the nest of a different species of duck, such as a wood duck, common goldeneye or other merganser species. Those same species may also lay their eggs in hoodie nests.
Some hoodie nests have contained up to 44 eggs!
If you’d like to see a hooded merganser (sort of) up close, head on up to Lost Creek Lake, there are lots of recent sightings from the William L. Jess Dam all the way down to Casey State Park.
