Subject: [Tweeters] peculiar behavior of ducks
Date: Nov 2 20:52:44 2005
From: Jeff Kozma - jkozma at charter.net


Ducks start to pair bond in the fall and winter, mostly on their wintering grounds. Thus, you may have seen two males fighting over a female. I have already seen male Buffleheads courting females on the Columbia River. It is not uncommon at this time of year to see courtship behavior starting in full swing. The birds establish pair bonds now so they are already paired up on their return migration north in the spring since the female leads the male to the breeding grounds, usually where the female was hatched the previous year.

Jeff Kozma
Yakima, WA
----- Original Message -----
From: Ruth and/or Patrick Sullivan
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 4:02 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] peculiar behavior of ducks


Hello Tweets,

While birding at Nisqually yesterday I was giving more attention on the many ducks do to slow birding. As I watched for a while I noticed two male Pintails start getting together in a wild way of going breast on breast beating hard some time going in to the air and continuing this behavior for a while.Then after that the 2 ducks were still feeding together with out one leaving the area. I often see a Canada Goose chasing more often where one goose chases the other away. First I was thinking that the two Pintail where territorial,but breeding time is over and all the ducks returned to there winter grounds lately so there have no reason being territorial.Is there a reason for this behavior? And if any of you tweeters have an answer I would appreciate some comments. I took photos of the duck behavior and also of the injured Snow Goose what was digging deep to the soil and eat the roots of the corn stubble.


The link to our photos is: http://www.pbase.com/godwit/october05photos/


Cheers,

Ruth Sullivan
Fircrest,WA
godwit at worldnet.att.net


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