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Unlike many types of ducks, common mergansers have not been extensively hunted – because they do not taste good.
“This bird, when cooked in the ordinary way, is about as palatable as a stewed kerosene lamp wick,” Edward Howe Forbush said in 1912. One hundred years earlier, John James Audubon described the taste as “fishy, oily, tough, and fitted for the palate of none but experienced epicures.”
On a duck-hunting chat, I read that these birds taste like Drano. (But no sane person knows what Drano tastes like, so take that review with a grain of salt.)
A recipe for cooking mergansers said to nail a merganser to a board and let it sit in the sun for seven days. After seven days, the recipe suggested, throw the merganser away and cook the board.
Adult male common mergansers (Mergus merganser) sport green heads on white bodies, while females and immature males are mostly grayish with cinnamon-colored, crested heads. Although male and female youngsters look the same, the males are much larger. Because adult males look so different from adult females, at one time it was thought that the females were a different species, called the Dun Diver.
Indeed, the name merganser comes from the Latin mergus, meaning “diver” and anser meaning “goose.” So from the earliest times, this duck was known for its diving agility.
These ducks are predominately fish eaters (and in some places were called fish ducks or goosanders). They prefer minnows, but will catch any small fish. They are most active in the early morning – often diving for food. John James Audubon said of this bird’s eating habits: “The Goosander rises to the surface with the fish in its bill, and, shifting it about until it is in a proper position, swallows it head foremost, then dives for more. So deeply does it swim, that not more than a third of its body is seen on the surface.”
These birds spend much of their time on open fresh water, floating and sleeping there, often in flocks – and when one bird dives, the others frequently follow suit. Common mergansers are excellent swimmers and divers because their legs are positioned far back on the body. This makes them awkward at taking off from the water. They run along the surface for a great distance before they become airborne.
They are also known locally as early spring migrants to their breeding grounds farther north. They migrate mostly at night, in small wedge-shaped flocks but might be spotted on large rivers on breaks from moving north in March. According to ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent,
This large and handsome duck has always been associated in my mind with the first signs of the breaking up of winter … We may confidently look for it in New England during the first warm days in February or as soon as the ice has begun to break up in our rivers and lakes. We are glad to greet these welcome harbingers of spring, for the sight of the handsome drakes flying along our water courses or circling high in the air over our frozen lakes, with their brilliant colors flashing in the winter sunshine, reminds us of the migratory hosts that are soon to follow.
They are looking for open water … where the first warm sunshine has tempted the earliest fish to seek the genial shallows … The drakes are always the first to arrive and the females follow a few weeks later.
Most are gone during the summer; some overwinter in our area from November to early April, and a few breed near the Quabbin reservoir and Westfield. In November and December when the weather gets severely cold in the north, these birds return to our coastal ponds and rivers. According to William Brewster, in January 1904, some common mergansers “appeared in Charles River near the Cambridge Hospital. The weather was bitterly cold at the time, and most of the river thickly encased in ice, but there were a few spaces of open water where the birds alighted to swim about and dive for fish.”
Mergansers build nests in tree cavities, often those left by woodpeckers. The female keeps the eggs warm on her own, as the male typically deserts the nest and the breeding ground. A day after the eggs hatch, the chicks jump from their tree nest to the ground below. The female leads the ducklings to water where she cares for and protects them – sometimes the young even ride on the mother’s back – but they catch their own food. At first, the ducklings dive for insects, but when they are about 12 days old, they begin catching fish. When the ducklings are about two months old, they learn to fly. In some places, the females and ducklings inhabit the summer lakes while the males congregate on swift-flowing rivers.
There was a time shooting ducks as they flew overhead in the city was allowed. Margaret Tucker Saunders in 1927 described it this way:
It is hard to believe that a little over fifty years ago gunners were allowed to shoot gulls and ducks as they flew over West Boston bridge [Longfellow Bridge], where the subway now runs, and other bridges crowded with horsedrawn vehicles and street cars; while gunning from boats on the river below was too common to cause much comment. About 1874, all shooting from bridges on the Charles basin was forbidden by law, not, however, so much to protect the bird as because horses were often frightened and sometimes hurt as a result of this practice …
As for Fresh pond – the pond and its neighboring marshes were the scene of increasing persecution of water-fowl by gunners, so much so that few ducks any longer dropped in there on their migrations for food and rest … When the shooting was stopped, the birds soon saw that they were safe and began once more to use the pond and nearby marshes. In fact gulls and ducks became so numerous on Fresh pond that people feared pollution of the water, then used without filtration to supply the city, and park policemen were ordered to frighten the birds off by shooting with blank cartridges.
Today these handsome ducks can still be spotted from November to March on Fresh Pond and the Charles River in Cambridge and the Mystic River in Somerville.
Have you taken photos of our urban wild things? Send your images to Cambridge Day, and we may use them as part of a future feature. Include the photographer’s name and the general location where the photo was taken.
Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
The far left and far right of the background on the feature image to this post (not seen above) was generated digitally and is not real. The rabbit was photographed and is real.
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