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November 18, 2004 - A sea duck samplerThe Suffolk Times I A sea duck sampler the *ffolh iffits* Official Newspaper of Southold Town Top Stories A sea duck sampler Business Obituaries Focus on Nature Police Reports Sports By Paul Stoutenburgh News Tips Editorials From Orient to Southold to Cutchogue to Columns Jamespoltto Riverhead, our bays have crustaceans and mollusks of all sorts. They'll stay around during the winter until ice Letters to the Editor been Pretty well cleared of boats and Email us their moorings. We saw this the last time we were in New Suffolk and also in Rate Card Subscribe Now Off, where sailboats had tugged at wait another week before we found them in a creek in Southold_ The male is a their moorings in the open bay all Classifieds summer and now have been hauled out The bufllehead duck is our smallest sea Back Issues for winter's sleep, some wrapped in white dude The male is quite striking in its Digital Edition plastic, others left to weather winter's black- and - -white attire, while the female is wrath- very plain, which makes her less Community News conspiai�sfwhennt taking ca of her Calendar There were still a few boats left in the young- Dining bay when we took our little 1346ot endlessly diving ducks in our creeks and Health Whaler out to check on the sea ducks bays - Real Estate that come down from their nesting area Times/Review photo by Paul East End Links in the far North this time of year- They'll Stotrtenlurgh Site Help the winter feeding along the Eastern seaboard in our bays and Sound- Sure enough, we found scoters and oldsquaw sprinkled throughout the bay. Not many, but enough to let us know they had made their move, just as the seasons do. The Wine Press Around April these smallest of ducks start to move to their breeding grounds in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and southern Alberta in Canada, where they'll look for a woodpecker hole from the previous year. Usually it's a flicker's nest they are knoldng for, as the hole has to be big enough for this little duck to get into. Once the nest is found, they'll take over the site and defend it furiously. The eggs are laid on the bare bottom of the hollow tree nest As we know more about these and other ducks, we are finding sonm interesting things happening. Other buffleheads are laying their eggs in the chosen nest This is called nest sharing and is quite common among dudes. The problem is that sometimes the rogue female lays Page 1 of 3 Thursday Nov, Quick Sear Search IL75 west he Enter city c htip: //www2.timesrevie-vr.com/ST /community /282224873115636.php 11/18/2004 They'll spend their winter diving and feeding along the bottom of our bays, where they'll feast on worms, an odd Ulie that thought it was safely hidden and, in general, crustaceans and mollusks of all sorts. They'll stay around during the winter until ice The Suffolk Times takes over and they are fond to go to the open water of the Sound or ocean to find new feeding grounds. Staff Roster What we didn't find at first were the little buffleheads, often called "butterballs" by Rate Card gunners- They are usually in our bays or, more likely, creeks by now, but we had to wait another week before we found them in a creek in Southold_ The male is a handsome fettle fellow in his black- and -white attire. The female is easily recognized in her drab, dark colors appropriate for her role as a camouflaged mother. Buffleheads The News - Review are usually found in groups, diving and popping up, looking around, diving, popping up and looking around - They seem to be enjoying life. Shelter Island Reporter They, like the scoters and oldsquaws, don't care about the cold. They frolic and dive in the icy cold water all winter long- Sleet and snow mean little to them, for its often colder above the water than in it, so they spend most of their time below and, like the The North Shore Sun cows in my pasture, are endlessly searching for something to eat- The Wine Press Around April these smallest of ducks start to move to their breeding grounds in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and southern Alberta in Canada, where they'll look for a woodpecker hole from the previous year. Usually it's a flicker's nest they are knoldng for, as the hole has to be big enough for this little duck to get into. Once the nest is found, they'll take over the site and defend it furiously. The eggs are laid on the bare bottom of the hollow tree nest As we know more about these and other ducks, we are finding sonm interesting things happening. Other buffleheads are laying their eggs in the chosen nest This is called nest sharing and is quite common among dudes. The problem is that sometimes the rogue female lays Page 1 of 3 Thursday Nov, Quick Sear Search IL75 west he Enter city c htip: //www2.timesrevie-vr.com/ST /community /282224873115636.php 11/18/2004 . The Suffolk Times I A sea duck sampler so many eggs they can't all be properly incubated. Can you imagine this Tittle duck incubating 15 to 20 eggs or more? We find this problem of "dump nests' (nests with eggs from more than one hen) happening with wood ducks also. Actually, were told we should no longer put a wood duck box out in open water because other hens easily find it and load it up so much with eggs that there is little or no return from incubation. The tree hole nests can be from 10 to 30 feet or more up in a tree. There the female incubates and hatches her young. The young respond to the mother's call, and, with slight hesitation, they jump out of the nest and fall to the ground, only to bounce up and run to where the mother is collecting the brood. Page 2 of 3 All the time that the nesting, incubating and rearing of young go on, the males take off, leaving all those jobs to the female. Irs then that the males form groups while they molt, meaning they lose their old feathers and gradually grow new ones. There's actually a period when they become Flightless because their wing feathers have been shed. This is when they are most vulnerable to predation. The female goes through the same molt but more gradually, through the summer, as she works with her young. So the next time you see one of these We groups of buFfleheads in your creek, think of them hatching out high in a tree cavity and jumping out, bouncing on the forest floor and scurrying off to learn the roots of survival. Then each year they return to our local waters for us to enjoy. Now that we know a little more about the buf8ehead, lens go to the scoters. Of the three species, the most abundant in our waters is the white - winged scoter. Up dose or through your binoculars you can see its large orange - and - red - and -white bill — quite striking against its black body. The white - winged scoter is our largest sea duck and can weigh over three pounds. The next most common is the surf scoter. Here again is a large black- colored duck. Its characteristic markings are a white patch on top of its head and a white patch on the back of its neck. These two white areas can be picked up on the males quite easily with your binoculars. It like the other scoter, feasts on crustaceans and mollusks of all kinds and a wide variety of goodies that come before it in its endless search for food. The third member of this diving family of sea ducks is the black scoter. This is the only completely black- colored duck we have. It too, has a colorful yellow -mange bill, and is less likely to be in our bays and Sound. The favorite food of all scoters is the blue mussel, and one of the best spots to find them is around rocky areas such as at Orient Point or Montauk Point. There you are almost guaranteed to find these rugged winter ducks feeding. Now for some amazing fads about the feeding habits of these sea ducks. We know they feed on a wide variety of hard - shelled crustaceans and mollusks and that they swallow them whole. For example, they will root out a small hard - shelled dam and swallow it whole. Anyone who has opened a dam knows how tough and hard the shell of the dam is and yet these rugged ducks thrive on them, letting their gbzard grind up the dam or mussel or crab, utilizing the nutrients and passing the unwanted shell particles out onto the sea floor. Pretty remarkable. Other paddling ducks, such as mallards, pintails, wood ducks and others, all have powerful gizzards and they, too, swallow their chosen food of acoms or even hickory nuts, whole. Now there's a tough nut to crack. The gizzards will grind these nuts up and utilize the nutrients, passing off the ground -up shells. Years ago we had a lot more of these winter sea ducks than we do today. I can remember looking off the bluffs at Mattitudc and seeing lderally thousands of scalers feeding there in the Sound. But that was 40 or 50 years ago. Occasionally you can still see great rafts of these divers out at Montauk, for that is where the blue mussel dings to the rocks and becomes food for these winter migrants. http:// www2. timesreview. com/ ST /community/282224873115636.php 11/18/2004 The Suffolk Times J A sea duck sampler Page 3 of 3 Duds hunters lump these three scoters together and call them coots. Usually they are shot at early in the morning as they pass over sandy points of land such as you find in Orient, Southold, Cutchogue and Jamespork The hunters stand as liar out on the spit of land as they can and, as the ducks fly by, try their luck — and there's a lot of that needed. Also, l can remember these same hunters getting a group of hardy young souls together, taking their boats by trailer or pickup to the Sound, where they would haul them out and take them to the water's edge. Once out in the water they'd anchor their boats a gunshot apart and wait for the flight to begin. They would do this at dawn when the dudm were moving to there feeding grounds. Its called "paw shooting,' something that is rarely done today. The reason is there are fewer and fewer of these rugged sea ducks around. The other duck we saw out in the bay was the oldsquaw, my favorite of all winter dudks. I can never get enough of seeing this duds Its one of our fastest fliers. The males are mainly black and white in color and have long tart teathers.They, too, spend most of their fives below the water, looking for crabs, clams and mussels — agairu, almost anything that the g"ard can handle. They have a strange and wonderhd yodel. listen for them on a quiet day. And so we've seen some of the ducks in our bay. Get famMar with them and you'll make We a lot more interesting, parfiwlarly if you have your binoculars with you and you can start to identify a wh de4wrtrged sinter or an oldsquaw. © 2004 Times - Review Newspapers http://www2-timesreview.com/ST/Community/282224873115636.php 11/18/2004