Love And War
April 14th, 2009

'Tis the season to see interesting water birds at Dow's Lake. Common Mergansers all over the place, a few Hooded Mergansers, and a lone Double-Crested Cormorant sunning on a rock. Over at Fletcher Wildlife Garden, a male Brown-Headed Cowbird was singing at the edge of a field.

Some trivia:

• Mergansers: fish-eating diving ducks. ("Diving ducks" are ducks who submerge all the way underwater when feeding.) All female mergansers have shaggy orangeish-brown crests.
  
  
• Cormorants: Odd, rather prehistoric-looking black water birds, related to pelicans. Unlike most water birds, their wings aren't waterproof, so they have to stand in the sun and dry them off periodically.
  
  
• Brown-Headed Cowbird: A small blackbird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. The hosts then raise the young, sometimes at the expense of their own chicks, unless they're smart enough to evict the foreign eggs on sight. Historically Cowbirds followed the movements of bison, which is why they didn't have time to nest on their own.

The marsh beside Dow's Lake is a favorite breeding ground for Red-Winged Blackbirds. This evening I arrived there to find a flock of males making a huge ruckus, flying around and chacking. Periodically they would all perch in one place, chack like crazy, then take off again. I wondered if they were harassing a raptor, and was particularly bewildered when the scolding seemed to be directed at a spot in the reed bed, somewhere a hawk wouldn't generally go.

Finally I found the culprit: a lone female Red-Winged Blackbird. She flew off, pursued by nearly every male in sight, and took shelter in some underbrush at the marsh edge, flicking her tail and looking only mildly perturbed.

Coming soon: baby Red-Winged Blackbirds!

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