Photographing the Goosander, a Very Special Duck

For most of us, the duck we know (and love?) is the widespread Mallard. You can see it across the world: Europe, Asia, North America, and it has even been introduced to Australia and New Zealand. But today I’m going to introduce you to a duck that is different in many ways. Meet the Goosander, also known as the Common Merganser.

The Goosander is one of the six members of the genus Mergus, which lives mainly in the northern hemisphere. I use the word mainly because there is one member south of the equator, the Brazilian Merganser. But this duck is so critically endangered that I fear that if I were to write this article a few years from now, I would have to replace the word “mainly” with “exclusively.”

In the headline, I stated that the Goosander is a very special duck. Why is that? In part, it is the bird’s buoyancy.

An ordinary duck, such as a Mallard, floats above the water. When it needs to reach underwater plants or small animals on which it feeds, it only partially submerges. This allows land-based observers to admire its beautiful, well, shall we say, tail.

Meanwhile, the Goosander can dive completely and stay underwater for up to a minute. It is as agile under water as a Cormorant and, like the Cormorant, its main food is fish. The shape of its bill is adapted to snag slippery prey, with a hook at the end and tiny teeth around the edge.

Like pelicans or even dolphins, Goosanders work together when hunting. They have been observed forming a semicircle around schools of fish, chasing them into shallower water where they are easier to catch.

When it comes to nesting, a Goosander resembles a woodpecker or owl. Unlike the Mallard, which nests on the ground, the Goosander chooses a cavity in a tree. It can’t carve one itself, so it depends on the woodpecker’s obsession with drilling! Alternatively, it will find natural cavities in a tree in which to nest.

Such a nest can be quite high above the ground. However, Goosander ducklings have to find their own food, so eventually they have no choice but to jump out of the nest. When they do, they fly no better than a pine cone. Yet they generally survive unharmed to continue their journey.

Even the care of the ducklings is a little different from duck stereotypes. Yes, the female Goosander, like other ducks, guides her ducklings through the water and warns them of danger. But her care goes beyond that. As with Loons, the mother Goosander is not only a protector and guide to her young, but also a floating island. When the chicks are small, a whole “nursery” of them can fit on their mother’s back, as you see in the photo above.

In fact, I didn’t really need to put the word nursery in quotation marks, because Goosanders really use the principle of this institution! On occasion, several ducklings from different mothers will gather in one place, supervised by a single female while the rest of the mothers are busy with foraging. Among birds, you’ll see something similar in flamingos and penguins.

I have always wanted to at least see the female carrying the ducklings on her back, and even better to photograph them. I got my chance a few years ago in the center of Prague. There, in the former royal game preserve (a park called Stromovka), I came across a female with her young. Luckily, I had my camera with me at the time. When I returned the next day, the female and her chicks were gone.

While taking pictures, I entertained the park visitors by crawling through the shore vegetation like a clumsy male of a strange species of freshwater seal. With my elbows in the water and my belly in the mud, I tried to get as close to the water’s surface as possible. (After all, the closer to the surface you can get, the better the background and foreground will be.) I probably would have done things very differently today, but more on that another time.

To sum it up, Goosanders are ducks that dive like cormorants, hunt like pelicans, nest like woodpeckers, and care for their young like flamingos! Well, you have to admit, aren’t they remarkable ducks?