Fourth (final) posting in this Merganser Series.

The morning after the last sighting of the Mergansers, as I was sitting in our sun room reading the morning paper and having a cup of coffee, I suddenly heard this frantic splashing of water and flapping of wings. I looked out the window and sure enough, there were the Mergansers again - all 25-to-30 of them plus Mom, THE BOSS. Where yesterday afternoon, they were contently swimming and grooming, this morning they were again frantically fishing and chasing one another trying to steel a caught fish. It was quite an hilarious sight. It seemed that they would herd, as it were, the fish to shallow waters, than one or two would catch a fish and the rest would chase these lucky ones to try and wrestle the fish from them. Mom, simply swam along and watched the melee, not interfering at all as can be seen in the above image.


One has caught a fish, it changed hands (beaks) several times until one grabbed it and ran, so to speak.


The chase is on.


Only one left chasing now, but the fish is not secured until it's down the hatch so it is flipped head-first on the run and ...


...swallowed on the run.


One final image of THE BOSS.

Note, it is apparently not uncommon for broods of 8 to 10 Mergansers to form groups of 20-to-30 watched over by several females. In this case, during the four sightings, we observed only one female present each time, presumably the same female?? Reportedly, the young leave the nest usually the day they hatch and they catch their own food from the start. So, at least MOM doesn't have to cook.

Last year I only once saw a brood of some 10 young Common Mergansers, plus Mom, near our shore. After that I did not see them again. Prior to that I had not seen any. To have at least four sightings this year, right from our dock, was thus a pleasant surprise.

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