Taking a relaxed, only casually birdy walk with friends at Nisqually NWR
today, we found two amazing broods or families of Common Mergansers. Both
were on the Nisqually River. First we saw, at a distance, one female with
her brood of at least 15 quite young birds; later another female appeared
very nearby with about 16 much older young, in juvenal plumage and getting
almost as large as mama. One of them caught a fish and was actively chased
by two or three of its siblings until it swallowed its catch. I've never
seen broods of this species before and was amazed at their numbers. Bent
(LH of NA Wild Fowl, Part I, pages 5-7) says that the females produce only
one brood a season and lay from 6 to 17 eggs, and that he has taken [! but
that was in the old days] sets of 15-16, so I guess the numbers we saw are
typical. He notes that "[t]he downy young are handsome and attractive."
They certainly seemed to be, and I was sorry to only see them from such a
distance, using one of the crummy scopes set up by the refuge. (Since it
was only a casual walk with friends, I didn't bring my own scope.) BTW, if
any of you look at the book of notable observations at the refuge, you'll
see that I noted the species as "Am. Merganser," because that's the way I
think of them, even though the name was changed to "Common" years ago.
Sorry.)

Burt Guttman guttmanb at evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 360-456-8447
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S.E., Olympia 98503