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FIFTY UNCOMMON BIRDS OF THE UPPER MIDWEST
By Dana Gardner UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS
Copyright © 2007 University of Iowa Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-58729-590-4
Chapter One
Surf Scoter Melanitta perspicillata
On December 8, 2004, I joined my friends Carol Schumacher and Fred Lesher to look for waterfowl along the Mississippi River north of Winona, Minnesota. The river was not yet frozen and we found tundra swans just where we expected to see them. In the main channel were thousands of common mergansers. Closer to us was a common loon.
Not far from the loon were two ducks that looked different from ducks we were used to seeing. By noting their low position in the water, the way they sprang forward and dove with wings partly spread, their white face patches, stout bills, and dark appearance, Carol and Fred, who know waterfowl better than I do, were able to identify the birds as scoters, sea ducks that are rare for this area. The lack of white wing patches told us they were surf rather than white-winged scoters. Brownish rather than black bodies and the lack of multicolored bills meant they were females or first-winter juveniles.
Although unrelated to the American coot of the rail family, these birds have acquired the nickname sea coot, perhaps because, like coots, they are dark waterbirds not good for eating. Unlike coots, they spendmuch of the year in large concentrations on the coasts, frequently scoting, or scooting, through breaking waves while feeding offshore where they consume primarily mollusks but also small fish, crustaceans, and aquatic insects.
Scoters occasionally winter on the Great Lakes and, rarely, on other bodies of fresh water. Most of the birds seen away from the coasts are migrating. The birds we saw on the Mississippi were likely on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. I was happy their rest stop coincided with our visit, thus allowing me to add another species to my life list. As with other ducks, surf scoters form new pair bonds each year, commonly on their wintering grounds. In courtship the male bows, swims with his neck stretched upward, and sometimes pursues a female underwater. Breeding takes place in northern Canada or Alaska. Scoters must breed in freshwater areas because their young, whose specialized salt glands are not fully developed, cannot survive drinking salty water. The female, who also does all the incubating, builds a nest lined with down in a shallow depression near a pond or sluggish stream in sparsely forested habitat and sometimes on open tundra. Shortly after hatching, the babies go to water and feed themselves, although their mother remains nearby for several weeks. Young birds eventually form in larger crèches attended by one or more adults. They will not breed until they are two or three years old.
This species declined seriously in the early 1900s, possibly due to overhunting. Persecution of sea ducks is common because of their perceived impact on fish. They are also vulnerable to oil spills and other pollution. However, current populations appear to be stable.
Hooded Merganser
Lophodytes cucullatus
From a distance, because of its large, white head patches, I sometimes mistake a male hooded merganser for the smaller male bufflehead. However, the white on the bufflehead continues around the back of his head, while the merganser has two patches, one on each side. The black vertical bars that separate his rusty flanks from his white breast further distinguish the merganser. The female has a rusty-orange crest and brownish body. The striking crests and elegant plumage of these ducks always startle me.
Two other mergansers, the common and the red-breasted, inhabit North America. All have serrations on the edges of their bills that enable them to grasp slippery fish, thus earning them the nickname sawbills. Mergansers belong to the subfamily Mergini, which also includes sea ducks such as eiders, scoters, goldeneyes, buffleheads, and long-tailed ducks. All Mergini have a tolerance of salt water and prefer animal foods that they find by swimming underwater while propelling themselves with their feet.
The hooded is the smallest of our three mergansers and seems to be the least common because it usually appears with only one or a few other birds and because it inhabits swamps, wooded ponds, narrow rivers, or coastal estuaries where it is difficult to observe. I once saw a pair on the South Fork of the Root River near my home, but most of the birds I've seen have been on backwater ponds of the Mississippi River, such as those along Army Road outside of New Albin, Iowa.
Pairs form in late fall or winter. During courtship the male dramatically raises and spreads his crest. Breeding grounds are generally across the Northeast to the Upper Midwest, into Canada, and south along the Mississippi. The female builds a nest of wood chips lined with down in a tree cavity near water ten to fifty feet above ground. Females often lay eggs in each other's nests, may share incubation with other cavity nesters, and occasionally hybridize with goldeneyes and buffleheads. Incubation lasts about one month. Within twenty-four hours after hatching, the young leave the nest, not by being pushed out or carried by the mother as formerly thought but by jumping to the ground when she calls from below. The babies feed themselves, while their mother watches over them. They are able to fly when they are about seventy days old.
Migration to the southeastern states and the northern coast of Mexico occurs late in fall. The birds usually arrive in pairs or small flocks, then gather into single-species roosting groups of one to two hundred.
Hooded mergansers declined in the past with the loss of large, mature trees near water, which they require for nesting. However, because they have adapted to the use of nest boxes, such as those provided for wood ducks, populations are presently rising.
Greater Prairie-Chicken
Tympanuchus cupido
In spring male greater prairie-chickens, also known as pinnated grouse, gather on traditional display grounds called leks. In urgent attempts to attract females they engorge the yellow combs above their eyes; raise their pinnae, or elongated earlike feathers; inflate their orange esophageal air sacs; and emit low hooting moans or booms as the sacs deflate. Minnesota birder Mark Alt described the display he witnessed in west central Minnesota as a "foot stomping, whoop yelling, balloon sac resonating, cluck stammering ritual."
Several times in the 1970s, my birding partner Fred Lesher visited Fred and Fran Hamerstrom in an area of central Wisconsin now preserved as Buena Vista Prairie, thanks to efforts by the Hamerstroms. At dawn, Fred would find himself in a blind watching prairie-chickens boom and "carry on like so many windup toys, stamping and drumming their feet as they scurry about, and occasionally leaping vertically while uttering a squawk."
After mating, the female lays and incubates ten to twelve eggs in a shallow depression among tall grasses. The young hatch in about twenty-four days and quickly leave the nest to eat seeds, leaves, and insects they find for themselves, although they stay with their mother for almost three months. The birds may remain in the same area year round or travel up to a hundred miles between their breeding and wintering grounds.
The greater prairie-chicken was once abundant across eastern and central North America. However, according to Thomas S. Roberts in his comprehensive 1932 book The Birds of Minnesota, this species had not yet arrived in our region during the early days of exploration. In the mid 1880s, keeping pace with settlement, clearing of forests, and planting of grain fields, it extended its range west and northwest. The bird's preferred habitat is tallgrass prairie, but it adapted to cultivated grasses and eventually entered cultivated areas interspersed with stands of oak.
On April 12, 1883, Johan Hvoslef, Lanesboro physician and naturalist, wrote, "The prairie-chickens boomed so loudly this morning from Henrik's field that we could hear them very plainly in town." He reported these birds until 1918 when his diaries ended. By the late 1930s, the species had disappeared from southeast Minnesota.
Roberts lamented the extensive hunting of prairie-chickens and warned that without some restraint they were destined to the same fate as the now extinct passenger pigeon. In Minnesota, 410,000 birds were taken in 1925 alone. Habitat loss due to an increase in the size of cultivated fields, leaving no hedgerows for cover and no residue of prairie plants, also contributed to the decline of the species, which is now primarily confined to preserved native grassland in the Midwest. Populations could rise with restoration of additional habitat, but that is unlikely to occur given the demands of agriculture.
Common Loon
Gavia immer
The many popular recordings of common loons cannot begin to compare with the rich yodeling of actual birds on a summer night in the north woods. A feeling for what wildness is must be similar in all of us, because "wild" is the word we most often use to describe this music that sends quivers of delectable fear through our bodies. To some it sounds like demented laughter, giving rise to "loony" as a colloquial term for madness.
Loons, five species in all, are the only members of the family Gaviidae and the order Gaviiformes. Their relationship to other birds is unclear. For decades the American Ornithologists' Union listed them as our oldest species, which may have influenced my impression that they look primitive. That impression continues despite the AOU's 2004 determination through genetic studies that loons have in fact evolved more recently than geese, swans, ducks, partridge, and grouse.
Common loons are bulky, low-slung, fish-eating divers with good underwater vision and legs set far back on their bodies for propulsion in the water. To locate fish, they peer into the water with bills and eyes submerged, then dive and swim below the surface. The position of their legs makes them awkward on land, where they move by pushing themselves along on their breasts. They need large lakes with ample room for takeoff because their heavy bodies require running starts to fly.
On lakes and tundra ponds in Canada, Alaska, and the northern tier of states from Minnesota to the East Coast, loons claim breeding territory by yodeling and circling overhead. In synchronous displays the male and female chase, swim, dive, and lower their bills into the water. The nest, built by both sexes, is a mound of vegetation on an island or shore. Both sexes incubate their two eggs for about two weeks. The young leave the nest soon after hatching, but their parents continue to feed them and often carry them on their backs. Flight occurs about ten weeks after hatching.
The common loon is Minnesota's state bird, although it breeds only in the central and northern regions. During migration, however, it occurs on large bodies of water throughout the state and across the country. In 1932 ornithologist Thomas S. Roberts wrote that the loon once nested on every large lake in the state. He lamented its decline due to excessive hunting in spite of its unsuitability for eating.
This species is presently threatened in several states and Canadian provinces. Reductions in population are related to human disturbance on breeding grounds, poisoning from lead fishing tackle, water pollution by industrial wastes, and oil spills on the coasts where it winters. Education efforts have resulted in some decrease in human disturbance and the use of lead fishing tackle, but the other dangers are more difficult to mitigate.
American White Pelican
Pelecanus erythrorhynchos
Their great white bodies, huge yellow bills, and black flight feathers on wings spanning nine feet make American white pelicans look as much like storybook characters as living creatures. Every fall during Hawk Watch Weekend at Effigy Mounds National Monument near Marquette, Iowa, a flock of these birds circles overhead. Although we are watching for migrating hawks riding updrafts off the bluffs of the Mississippi River, the pelicans always interrupt this endeavor. We stop to admire their choreography as they circle and turn in unison, the sun glinting off their immaculate whiteness.
White pelicans are present along the Mississippi during migration. Nonbreeding birds, which tend to travel widely, are also present there in the summer. I have often seen these birds from Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge north of La Crosse, Wisconsin, where I have been able to observe their synchronized foraging methods. Sometimes they swim in a semicircular formation, herding fish, their primary food, toward the shoreline where they can easily catch them. Or two groups, mirroring each other, may drive prey into a narrow space between them. Flocks will also move in unison across the water, catching fish in the huge expandable pouches under their long bills.
Pelicans are colonial breeders. To nest successfully, they require freshwater lakes undisturbed by predators or humans. Mating displays include bowing, strutting with heads erect and bills pointed down, and flying in circles. Both sexes build a nest on the ground in a scrape rimmed with dirt, stones, and plant material. Both parents incubate the two eggs for about a month. Because they are among the few species that do not develop brood patches-bare sections of skin on the abdomen or breast that transfer body heat to eggs-pelicans incubate their eggs on or under their feet. Nestlings receive food from both parents; unless the food supply is abundant, the second baby to hatch doesn't survive. After about three weeks, the young leave their nests and gather with other young birds. They are able to fly about ten weeks after hatching.
In fall, white pelicans migrate in flocks to their wintering grounds in northern Mexico and along our southern coasts, where they may encounter their cousins, the brown pelicans, a species that rarely strays inland.
Previously, the white pelican bred broadly across interior North America, including the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota, in which they rarely nest now. Today, breeding regularly occurs in Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Montana, and North Dakota. Although by the mid twentieth century this bird had become an endangered species, increased protection of its habitat has enabled populations to rise. In most areas, however, it remains a species of special concern.
American Bittern
Botaurus lentiginosus
The bird stood still, like a stick, with its neck stretched up and bill pointed toward the sky. Its frozen position and vertical stripes blending with the lights and shadows of marsh grasses made it almost impossible to see even when I was looking directly at it. I was participating in the May 1989 Minnesota Ornithologists' Union weekend along the Mississippi River in Winona and Houston counties. I had never seen an American bittern before, and this one would have escaped me without the help of our leader Kim Eckert.
Although I have heard its gulping nighttime calls, which seem to emanate from a prehistoric creature in the depths of an impenetrable swamp and have earned it the nicknames thunder pumper, stake driver, and bog bull, I have yet to see another American bittern. Recently, however, on a visit to Cardinal Marsh near Decorah, Iowa, I saw two small birds fly by, flashing buffy wing coverts, and land in the marsh grasses, where they stood motionless with bills pointed toward the sky. They had to be least bitterns, the only other bittern in North America, one of the smallest herons worldwide, and a life bird for me.
Unlike most other herons, the American bittern, which ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent called a "recluse of the marshes" and a "shy denizen of the swamps," is primarily a solitary bird. It favors large freshwater wetlands with tall vegetation and some open shallow water, where it can wait patiently at the water's edge or step slowly and silently until it captures a fish or other aquatic creature with a sudden thrust of its bill.
Breeding occurs in any suitable habitat across most of the United States and Canada. The male booms to defend his territory. In courtship he shortens his neck, lowers his abdomen, and expands the white patches on his back. Mates engage in aerial displays. The female builds a nest of sticks, grass, and sedge in dense marsh growth or grasses on dry ground near water; she incubates her eggs for about four weeks and apparently cares for her three to five young alone. When she returns to the nest with partially digested food, a nestling will grab and hold on to her bill until she regurgitates food into its mouth. She feeds her babies for one to two weeks in the nest and for about two more weeks after they leave it. Age of first flight is about seven or eight weeks. During migration and on its wintering grounds in coastal waters, this species continues its solitary habits.
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Excerpted from FIFTY UNCOMMON BIRDS OF THE UPPER MIDWEST by Dana Gardner Copyright © 2007 by University of Iowa Press. Excerpted by permission.
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