I spotted my first male Common Merganser of the year nearly three weeks ago, and it fled so swiftly that the best I could manage was this blurred shot of it just taking off.
Despite that I probably got the best shots I’ll ever get of a male Common Merganser in breeding colors two years ago in Santa Rosa, I was determined to get a good shot this year, too. I became even more determined when several pairs of mergansers
showed up regularly two weeks ago, though they were shy enough to hang out on the other side of the Union River at a bend that is relatively inaccessible from the refuge.
Paying attention to where they fished and where they hung out finally paid off when I captured this shot of a pair resting on the Union River.
It’s easy to see why Leslie couldn’t believe these were the same kind of ducks when you see them sitting together like this, but if you ignore the plumage the similarities become clearer.
I even managed to catch a shot of the male swimming up Union River that captures a little of its beauty.
Hopefully if I keep watching I’ll manage to get a good shot of a male merganser flying, though these mergansers seem to have become pretty comfortable around people now that hunting season is a distant memory and seem content to swim away rather than take flight.