Creature Feature – Common Merganser—Mama Mia!
Posted by Dustin Horton // July 30, 2024 // Articles, Creature Feature
Did you know that Common Mergansers sometimes wind up with extra babies that aren’t their own? Perhaps you’ve observed this yourself as a nervous mother merganser swam along, leading a looooong line of adorable ducklings. One photographer captured an image of a single merganser with a burgeoning brood of 50 babies swimming along behind her! While this was an unusually big family even for mergansers, extra ducklings to the tune of 20 or so is not particularly uncommon.
The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, cavity nesting ducks like Common Mergansers often lay some eggs in the nests of other ducks in addition to their own nests. Scientists believe this is a sort of “reproductive insurance policy” that helps prevent losing an entire clutch to predation or some other threat. Secondly, since parent ducks can’t distinguish which ducklings are theirs, they will adopt any youngsters that have gotten separated from their real mothers.
Common Mergansers are typically seen along the shorelines of lakes and rivers where they dive beneath the water to catch fish and aquatic invertebrates. The female has a grayish body and a rust-colored head with a jaunty crest… and she just might have a pile of ducklings swimming along behind her!
Article & photo by Margie Manthey
