Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Elegant Hooded Merganser
By: Tom Berg
There are many species of ducks in North America, but one of the most elegant-looking is the hooded merganser. Both males and females sport a remarkable crest, or “hood” on top of their heads, which they can raise or lower at will. The males have a striking black and white hood while the females have a light brown, almost cinnamon-colored hood.
Like all ducks, hooded mergansers can be found in lakes, ponds, creeks and rivers. They are diver ducks, so they often dive for their food and catch it along the bottom of the lake. They are accomplished hunters, too, and they use their sharp eyesight to find and catch their prey under water. Hooded mergansers can even change the refraction of their eyes while diving to help them see better. One of their favorite foods is crayfish, and they eat a lot of them. They also eat plenty of small fish and aquatic insects, too.
Hooded mergansers typically nest in tree cavities. Some of these cavities are abandoned wood duck cavities and others are abandoned woodpecker nests. When trees are scarce, they will nest in man-made nest boxes, too. Female hooded mergansers usually lay between 5-12 plain white eggs in their nest, and incubate them for 26-40 days. Surprisingly, baby mergansers don’t stay in the nest for very long at all. They almost always leave the nest within 24 hours of hatching.
Hooded mergansers are one of several duck species that participate in “brood parasitism”. This is where the female duck lays some or all of her eggs in the nests of other ducks and lets the owner of that nest raise her chicks. Common mergansers, hooded mergansers, wood ducks and goldeneye ducks all participate in this practice. Researchers have found hooded merganser nests with more than 40 eggs in them!
The female hooded mergansers don’t seem to mind, and they go ahead and raise all of those cute little ducklings!
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