Greets --
Is the belly of a juvenile female hooded merganser white? This morning
at Narbeck I saw what is definitely a young teenybopper merganser with four
mallards (an adult female and three older teenyboppers). The merganser was
young (possible a freshman in HS). It was definitely a member of the mallard
group --- they swam in together, they ate together (but the merganser of
course went about it differently since it is a diver and not a dabbler), they
groomed themselves along the shore together, and then they did some more
feeding together. There was no adult merganser anywhere around the area. It
was definitely a merganser with the mallards but I am not 100% sure about the
species. My guess was stated in the first sentence.
The merganser aside, I saw the five green herons AGAIN this Sunday
morning (same time, same station). Today I saw all of them perched way up in
the tallest snag (which is way tall). They stayed for 15 minutes
(occasionally flying a circle and returning to the snag) and then four of
them flew off to the north together. The fifth one trailed the others but
soon returned to the snag, where it remained for another half hour. I think
they sound like that herd of running dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movie.
Jo Waldron
Everett, WA
joaw9 at aol.com
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