Blind Date with the Mergansers
On January 3, 2022, at the beginning of our third Covid-19 year, a dramatically colorful winter morning sky inspired me to walk around Blue Heron Lake near my home in the foothills of the Sierra, south of Yosemite National Park. Who might be visiting, I wondered. To my surprise, I counted a flock of 25 Common Mergansers and four Hooded Mergansers (two males and two females).
I was taken aback that they were in my neighborhood. I only knew mergansers from photographs in books. If they had visited in previous years, I wouldn’t have paid them any mind because I wasn’t interested in photographing sitting ducks just floating on the water. Besides, far from the lakeshore path, in the middle of the lake, they would have just blended in with the Canada Geese, Mallards, Double Crested Cormorants, Common Golden Eye, Ruddy Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks, and American Coots that I likewise ignored.
My myopic bias in only photographing birds in flight had left me in the dark regarding the beauty of sitting ducks. Call me a dunce if you like, I will agree wholeheartedly with your assessment and readily don the appropriate headgear. The spread of Covid-19, and the impetus it gave me to spend more time watching birds, changed my perspective in a substantive way.
The first summer of Covid-19 (2020), during the doldrums of Central Valley heat, and with nothing new to photograph, I discovered the beauty of Mallards floating on Blue Heron Lake. That experience inspired me to pen “Duck Days of Summer,” which you can read here. Upon sighting these mergansers, and knowing better now, I discarded the dunce cap and committed my energies to flushing out the elegance of these visiting aquatic birds.
The plumage of mergansers is, in a word, exotic. Raising and lowering their crest feathers dramatically alters their appearance, as if they were performers changing costumes. The shaggy plumes of the female Common Merganser’s crest bring to my mind the stylized coiffure of a white-haired Southern senator of yesteryear; sartorial, indeed. Equally striking, the male Hooded Merganser’s crest is evocative of the plumed headdress of Hawaiian King Kamehameha.
Female Common Merganser
Male Hooded Merganser
Female Hooded Merganser with raised crest
I was bent on photographing these ducks up close. The thing about mergansers, though, is that they do not want to have their picture taken. They have, I quickly discovered, an uncanny ability to spot all manner of predators, whether winged, four legged, or two legged ones like me. Whenever I approached, they always paddled far out to the middle of the lake or to a shoreline where I had no access.
Nevertheless, I was determined to have my merganser portraits; nothing would keep me from that prize. To that end, I resorted to subterfuge. No, not the kind you are thinking: I didn’t disguise myself as a rubber duck and float off into the middle of the lake. Instead, I bought a photography blind (a tent with viewing ports on all sides), and reconnoitered the shoreline for a good vantage point where I might set it up.
On the north side of the lake, there is a narrow channel where I decided to roll the dice with my blind. I had regularly observed the mergansers fishing there in the early morning. How clever these mergansers were in choosing that channel to troll. It is a dead end and, consequently, the fish are trapped when the mergansers paddle in. When leaving the inlet, the mergansers would pass alongside the blind, with me crouched inside. We all would be in very close proximity to each other. That was my plan.
Could I arrive early enough, though, ahead of the mergansers? Coffee in hand to take the edge off the winter’s pre-dawn chill, I arrived with my equipment and put myself in position. I waited patiently, sipping my coffee. And waited some more. Surely they would come, as I had seen them do before. And so they did: a group of twelve floated by, diving for breakfast along the way.
It was a good day for fishing, and the mergansers were not overtly concerned by the presence of the blind. I held off taking photos as they entered the inlet because I didn’t want any sound or movement to disturb their tranquility. My strategy was to let them enter the inlet, and wait until they were a bit further away before taking some trial photos. I would be ready and waiting, of course, when they paddled back out the channel, right in front of my viewfinder, with an eastern sun illuminating their passage. I took another sip of coffee.
And the mergansers? They performed as expected. Movement of the camera lens and shutter noise unsettled them, and they paddled quickly by; four or five flew overhead. I got my photos, though, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted something more: better photos, yes, and certainly another rush from the excitement of the hunt.
Male Common Merganser in flight
Female Common Merganser
Male Hooded Merganser
Male Hooded Merganser with raised crest
Female Hooded Merganser with fish
I returned the next day, but the mergansers did not. Henceforth, whenever I stationed myself at the inlet, they stayed away.
In the following days, I photographed them from a variety of locations, but nothing within close range. The videos I made, interestingly, revealed a fascinating behavior that I did not notice from afar: mergansers are fish thieves. Time and time again, I observed one individual dive underwater, only to resurface from underneath another in an attempt to steal its catch. Don’t you love those mergansers?
Mergansers stealing fish
By mid-February, the mergansers and other fishing birds (cormorants and kingfishers, for example) had all departed. I had hoped they might stick around and nest in an available tree cavity near the lake. That would have been a superb opportunity to view merganser ducklings riding on their parent’s back. To my disappointment, that occurrence was not in the cards for this year; fish stocks in Blue Heron Lake had become mostly depleted.
As things turned out, mergansers were not done with me, nor I with them. By chance, I discovered an adult female with five ducklings on the San Joaquin River where I kayak with a group of friends throughout the year. It was mid-June, and we were making our weekly kayak run. For the next three weeks, we encountered this assemblage of duck feathers along the same section of the river. The sight of an adult merganser and five rapidly growing ducklings was an opportunity I could not let pass. I just had to photograph the family before the ducklings were able to take flight and escape my very focused attention.
Female Common Merganser with five ducklings
But how? My mind began conjuring up the roadblocks to a successful mission. Photographing from the riverbank presented at least three problems, the first of which would be the bank where I chose to stand. East or west, the time of day and angle of the sun would be major factors in any decision.
Second, the width of the river in many places would put me too far away from the birds to obtain the close view I pictured in my mind. On any given day, there was, of course, only a 50/50 chance of picking the correct bank. Not good odds, especially when you are hauling camera gear on your back.
Third, this compact collection of fluffy duck down could be anywhere along the river. Indeed, I could be in for a very long walk looking for them if I started from the wrong place.
All things considered, the chances of locating them at a land vantage point that provided a successful shoot were slim. The obvious solution, then, was to be on the water, in my kayak. That choice, though, presented another host of problems entirely different from those of being on land. My biggest worry was dropping the camera and telephoto lens into the water.
Being an an experienced boater, I knew that other issues would make photographing from a boat problematic. Think about it: the water is moving. The boat would drift downriver, as well as rotate on its axis if I didn’t paddle to keep it in place. A kayak is unstable, so there would be rocking motion, too. And, what about the birds? Would they stay put and pose for my photo? Four concurrent forces of movement meant that I’d either have to paddle to position myself for taking photographs, or hold my camera. I couldn’t do both at the same time. Get the picture?
As fate would have it, everything worked out better than I had anticipated. The merganser family was present, and they decided to sit briefly, oh, ever so briefly, on a log before heading upriver and away from me. Two kayaking buddies, Bob and Nat, were there to provide moral support, and fish me out of the river in the unlucky event that I tipped myself over (which, fortunately, did not come to pass).
Common Merganser ducklings on a log
Five Common Merganser ducklings on a log
Common Merganser ducklings floating on a log
So now, if ever you have a mind to photograph birds on moving water, you know what to anticipate. Good luck.
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