We spent the day at the project, working on the shed. At the end of the day, I made a pot of coffee and D'ski and I took a pond walk. Guess what we found cruising the pond.
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Yep, Hooded Mergansers. Oh yeah, and we're talking 4 males + 4 females. Of course, the birding side of us was excited. Quite frankly, neither of us had ever seen one, so 8 of them was really cool. Or was it? These big-headed show-offs are fish-eating machines....right?
We have 4 Wood Duck boxes open and ready for business. Hmmmm....4 HM couples. Do I sense a plan? From what I have read, these cute little buggers love WD boxes, particularly when they are on poles over the water...in a pond surrounded by deciduous woods. Bingo; LNP.
Here's the fish story. Spring 2007, we stocked 1300 RES fingerlings, 800 YP 4" - 6", and 60# of FH. We also added 250 papershell crayfish. We have a natural abundance of Bullfrogs, also. I saw the bigaz tadpoles cruising the shore last weekend.
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One part of me wants to go and cut down the nesting boxes...then...the other part of me reminds me that I was the one that brought the knife to a gun fight. Unless you guys tell me that I am heading for certain disaster, I'm gonna let it play out.
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edit; I just read the Audobon website. They say:

I guess we should feel honored.

I'd be inclined to let it play out, even though mergansers eat fish. Then again, I'm not sure how many/what sizes of fish HMs can eat in a given amount of time.

I did find he following:
"The Hooded Merganser finds its prey underwater by sight. The merganser can actually change the refractive properties of its eyes to enhance its underwater vision. In addition, the nictating membrane (third eyelid) is very transparent and probably acts to protect the eye during swimming, just like a pair of goggles."

How clear is the pond? If visibility is very high, then the HMs could be efficient fish-hunting machines. I'll be interested to hear what you end up doing.

OTOH, Brettski, you could open up a whole new audience for Pond Boss - Birders who build ponds to attract Hooded Mergansers.

You ever get any Buffleheads there? We've had them here twice in 6 years.

Wow they are gorgeous birds though!

What about blocking the houses until they move on if you're concerned about them.

Theo asks

Not that we have witnessed...yet. We didn't have the bird-book with us during our visit, so I thought that these guys were Buffleheads...until we got home and studied up.
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Cecil notes

Yeah, they really are. They are going through the courtship rituals, so we observed

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Here's another pic of a female and male.

Another good pic, and a good idea from Cecil. If I were a birder, I'd be inclined to grant them some fish in exchange for an appearance. Since I'm not a birder, I wouldn't know they were eating fish. No problem either way.

We had several Ringnecks and one Redhead yesterday.

Brettski, I would feel honored if we had hooded mergansers nest at our place! Wood ducks are easy to get. Yes, they will eat a few little fish but not enough to make a difference.

For about 3-4 days, we had more snow geese around here than I've ever seen in my life. Northern SD and ND got a heavy snow which drove them back south to our area. Literally tens of thousands of them everywhere you looked. There would be a flock of 5-10,000 in a field and a couple of miles down the road, another flock of the same size and on and on. A few were shot but not many. It's warm today and they're gone!

I've had a couple dozen bluebills, about 4-6 buffleheads and lost of malards hanging around for a week or so. I don't hunt ducks, just never got into it, I guess, so this really my first opportunity to see the things up close.

WOW...beautiful birds. Can't believe any of 'em can eat THAT many fish, regardless. I'd just let 'em be, but that's me. Love to see 'em nest around here...

nice shots b'ski.

i'll attempt some pics to compliment yers when i get time, but for the first year (because of the healthy fish population....duh....) we have two pair of bufflehead and two to three pair of common merganser which switch time between our pond and the ranch pond. i thought the bufflehead were hooded merganser at first, but quickly realized they were too small.

norm, i guess its where you live.....i have seen a wood duck on our pond briefly, two times in 12 years...

I would suggest to just let them be and if you think they are taking too many fish out of the pond, restrict the boxes or other habitat to make them move on. I don't see 8 ducks making too much of a dent in the population of a 5 acre pond.

They are beautiful birds! I would let them stay too. What's a few fish gone when you have ducks like that making your pond their home for a while? Hope you have a few lawn chairs by the pond for bird watching. I wonder how many babies they will have?

A few are ok but several generations times 8 well -- what's a few FH and YP they are cheap to replace. Heck I let some kingfishers and a GBH stick around all year. If you can keep RES do so as they will reduce the parasite problem.

I just made a visit to the project yesterday. It's been 2 weeks since the last visit; the Hooded Merganser encounter. There was one male and one female paddling about all day. I could hear the somewhat unique frog-like croaking sound used during the mating rituals (it was probably a bullfrog with a HM call, pulling a slow one on me )
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bz mentioned that he gets them; no biggie. I'm gonna let it play out.

We don't get a whole lot of international visitors like B'ski and D'ski. However, this afternoon we were visited by this Canadian couple:



Mostly our feathered friends just stop by for a drink, a rest, a snack, and a short break. They are always welcome. These two stayed for a couple of hours. As I fed the fish this evening, they just stood on shore and watched. Then they flew off into the sunset.




I'd love to have some more exotic types like the Mergansers and Wood Ducks. Although, last summer we were graced with a pair of alternate life-styler Mallard drakes from about June until September.

When I read that the first time, I was all excited that you were getting visitors from the foreign country of Chicago.
How exotic!

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It beats seining and trapping to reduce the sick and undersized. Cant imagine the birds with those small bills could no any harm on your size pond. Now if their offspring look like this, its time to go to battle. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=na...r+turkey+photos