AN INTIMATE AVIAN EXPERIENCE

For a unique and intimate experience with waterfowl and other birds, visit George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary west of Ladner, British Columbia.

Reifel Refuge, as it’s called by many, is a 300-hectare (740-acre) plot of land on Westham Island on the Fraser River, about an hour’s drive from the metropolis of Vancouver. George Reifel bought the land in 1927 and established a family recreational retreat on it, creating waterfowl habitats as well as road access by a series of dikes and causeways.

In the 1960s, the Reifel family granted a lease to the British Columbia Waterfowl Society to create a bird sanctuary on the land. Helped by the management of Ducks Unlimited Canada, wildlife habitat was preserved and expanded with the provincial government establishing a game reserve on adjacent land. In 1972, the family further donated and sold the land to the federal government on the condition that it would be maintained as a sanctuary.

The government designated part of the sanctuary and the area adjacent to it, some 328 hectares, as the Alaksen National Wildlife Area. Some activities are permitted on this land but not the free access to the public that characterizes the sanctuary.

The sanctuary charges a nominal entrance fee and is open from 9 am to 4 pm every day. Sometimes it has quite large crowds, not a place to go if you want to get away from people for your nature experience. However, the high density of humans day after day is what has conditioned the birds to be as unafraid of us as they are.

The sanctuary was set up for waterfowl, and there is always a good representation of local waterfowl species, both dabbling and diving ducks. Large numbers of Snow Geese migrate through the adjacent wetlands, some of them remaining for the winter, and mostly those will be seen overhead moving between feeding areas. All the ducks present are somewhat used to people and will furnish close viewing and great photo opportunities.

There is a small population of resident Sandhill Cranes, most of them not pinioned, and some of them will feed from the hand. Some of them are good at gently taking seeds from an open palm, but be aware that you’re taking the chance of a poke with a sharp beak from those that aren’t. There are also Black-crowned Night-Herons roosting near the entrance to provide good looks at another unexpected species.

There are feeding stations everywhere, and during the winter they attract great numbers of seed-eating birds, for example Black-capped Chickadees, Red-winged Blackbirds, Spotted Towhees, Fox, Song, and Golden-crowned Sparrows, House Finches and House Sparrows. The chickadees are so tame that anywhere along the trails they will land on your hand if you open it with sunflower seeds on it. Occasionally a Red-breasted Nuthatch may do the same.

Brown Creepers and kinglets are also often seen, and like other birds there are quite tame. Quite a few other passerines inhabit the patches of woodland, and unusual visitors are seen with some regularity, for example Bohemian Waxwings and Pine Grosbeaks recently. And it’s always worth watching for less common sparrows such as Swamp, Harris’s, and White-throated along the path.

Because of all the feeders and seeds, rats and mice and Eastern Gray Squirrels (including the black morph, established in the Vancouver area) are also attracted to the area, and the local owls know it. A pair of Great Horned Owls is regularly seen, and there are always Northern Saw-whet Owls present, if very hard to see in the dense foliage where they roost. Other species of owls are seen from time to time, and there are usually hawks and falcons about, interested in the songbirds as well as the rodents.

You can buy sunflower seeds at the office and carry them around to feed to whichever birds you like. You may give them all to chickadees, as there is something wonderful about one of these tiny birds landing on your hand. You may be attacked by Mallards before you barely get going onto the trail, and Mallards are the most abundant and insistent ducks in the place. But look closely, and among the Mallards there will be at least a few American Wigeons and a few Northern Pintails.

More than these, there are Wood Ducks scattered around the area, and they too are interested in handouts if they can get to them before the omnipresent Mallards. They are shy enough that you’ll have to seek them out, but one way to feed them is to put seeds on top of fence posts, which the Wood ducks—tree dwellers that they are—can easily get to. Of course they have to beat the chickadees and Song Sparrows to them.

Dennis Paulson

THE ELEGANT DUCK

When we think of ducks, we may think of familiar white waddling barnyard Pekins, but in fact these waterfowl are among the most strikingly colored birds. Some of them are downright gorgeous. Look at a Wood Duck if you like brilliant iridescence. How about a Long-tailed Duck for a pleasing pattern of black, brown, and white? Or if swatches of pure color attract you, peruse a Cinnamon Teal. Of course it is the males you will be looking at, as females are generally brown; not that they aren’t beautiful in their own ways.

The Northern Pintail (Anas acuta), not the most brightly colored of ducks, is surely the most elegant. The long, swanlike neck of the male of this species contributes to the look of elegance, as do the long, sweeping central tail feathers. The subdued gray and white body and rich dark brown head add patrician colors to the attractive shape. Even the females, somewhat smaller than the males, have longer necks than those of other ducks.

Why the long neck? Well, dabbling ducks often feed by upending in shallow water, their tail up in the air and their head and neck submerged to sample underwater fare such as leaves, buds, and seeds of aquatic plants and a great variety of invertebrates. You can only reach so far with an average-length neck, and over time pintails just outreached the competition by evolving that long neck. By feeding in water too deep for their near relatives, they presumably were able to take advantage of resources unavailable to the others.

But it must be added that most of the feeding done by pintails is in very shallow water or on land, where they take seeds from sedges and grasses. On their wintering grounds, they are very common among the dabbling ducks that feed on marine invertebrates on mudflats as the tide goes out. The long neck also serves them well in those situations, allowing a foraging bird to reach all around it. This adaptable species is one of the most abundant ducks in western wetlands.

As in other temperate-zone ducks, pair bonds are formed in fall and early winter, and you can expect to see pintail pairs from then on until the female has laid her 5-10 eggs. Male courtship consists of ritualized displays and vocalizations, with head up, bill down, and tail up prominent components. That long, slinky tail is surely impressive at this point. Females are impressed by both the intensity of courtship displays and the constant attentiveness of the courting male. Some of the choice may also involve appearance, males with more colorful scapulars and whiter breasts preferred.

Because mortality is heavier on females than males in most ducks, there is a surplus of males in late winter and spring after all the females are paired up. In this and other dabbling ducks, it is common to see groups of males in pursuit of a single female. These pursuit flights can involve up to a dozen males – although usually just a few – and last for many minutes. They may end with a forced copulation when the female is forced down on land, or the female may “escape” only to be harassed by other males that spot her. The female may have to be mated to avoid this.

Prime pintail breeding habitat is a shallow marsh. Because such marshes are subject to disappearance during any extended drought, they come and go in the landscape, and so do pintails. During wet years, they do well, and their numbers increase. During widespread droughts, the opposite is the case. Breeding populations wax and wane and have varied from about 2 million to about 10 million birds in recent decades.

Dennis Paulson

RUDDY DUCKS ARE ODD DUCKS

Most ducks of the North Temperate Zone mate in the winter, then the pair flies to their breeding grounds, where the female builds a nest and lays eggs. When she begins to incubate the eggs, the male deserts her, and there is no pair bond until the next fall, when the cycle begins again.

Ruddy Ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) are quite different, and this might have been predicted, as they are the only northern ducks in which males molt in the spring into a bright breeding plumage, much as many shorebirds and passerines do. This is the rich red color that gives the species its name. The male bill, gray during winter, turns intense sky blue from structural changes.

There is no courtship or mating on the wintering grounds, but as soon as the birds arrive on their breeding grounds in spring, intense mating activity takes place. The males display actively at each other and at nearby females. The display consists of the male bumping its bill on its chest rapidly, creating bubbles in the water around it. This Bubbling Display is usually followed by a rush across the water in Display Flight, looking and sounding like a little motor boat. The loud noise accompanying the latter is made by the feet.

Male Ruddy Ducks are fiercely aggressive to one another and to other waterfowl when in mating mode. Females also can be very aggressive. Grebes and coots are not happy sharing ponds with Ruddy Ducks, and vice versa. They are not territorial, but the male stays very close to the female with which he is mated, even if only temporarily. Many males form a monogamous pair bond with a single female, some form pair bonds with a second and rarely a third female, and some appear to form no pair bonds at all, merely attempting to mate with any receptive female.

Now, about duck breeding. Most birds copulate by the male and female pressing the opening of their cloacas together, during which time sperm is transferred. But some male birds, including ducks, have a copulatory organ, the penis. This organ is not homologous to the mammalian or reptilian penis but is an erectile extension of the cloacal opening, as if a glove were turned inside out.

Ducks mate in the water, and cloacal appression might not be adequate for effective sperm transfer in the aquatic medium, so the evolution of a copulatory organ would have been an appropriate adaptation. The unequal sex ratio in ducks, with intense male competition for females, might also play a part in this adaptation. The penis is corkscrew-shaped, and the female vagina is similarly shaped in the opposite direction, so most mating attempts, especially between unmated birds in which the female does not cooperate, may be unsuccessful.

The Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata) of South America apparently has the longest penis in relation to its size of any vertebrate. It may be up to 40 cm, as long as the body. This species is closely related to the Ruddy Duck, which – as far as the present record books show – can develop a penis only about 25 cm long. A very interesting recent finding is that in a given wetland, only certain males develop the longest organs, and these are dominant to the others and the most successful breeders.

There is plenty more of interest about this odd duck. Ruddy Ducks lay the largest eggs with respect to body size of any duck, the average clutch of 7 eggs weighing about as much as the female herself. Thus the young hatch in a very precocial stage, grow quickly, and are abandoned by the female when about three weeks old, before they can fly. Speaking of flying, Ruddies are the poorest fliers among the ducks, rarely seen performing this activity. They apparently move around between wetlands and migrate entirely at night.

They are very highly adapted divers, with big feet that propel them under water, a compact body, and a long tail that may provide steering. They seem to be specialists on midge larvae, which make up the majority of their diet wherever studied. Because their prey is abundant and often evenly distributed, Ruddies can aggregate in large flocks that can find enough to eat even though there are many of them. They feed by diving to the bottom and slurping through the mud to strain out the larvae. They can feed actively for a while, fill up with midges, and then sleep, so our encouters are often with sleeping flocks.

Dennis Paulson

DUCK MATING GOES ON AND ON AND ON

It’s nowhere near spring, but believe it or not, there are many Pacific Northwest birds in the throes of intense mating behavior. Those birds are ducks. Ducks have a peculiar mating system, unique among birds. They form a strong pair bond, but it is mostly during the nonbreeding season!

Males of most temperate-zone ducks have bright, species-specific plumages, quite different from the drab plumages of females, many of which look very similar to one another. But these bright feathers are displayed from fall to early summer, and they are replaced during midsummer by a dull, female-like basic plumage (often called “eclipse” plumage). Displaying “breeding” plumage in fall, winter and spring and “nonbreeding” plumage in summer seems quite reversed from the situation in other birds, and in fact it is.

Most temperate-zone ducks are migratory, moving from breeding grounds in marshy freshwater wetlands to larger ponds and lakes and the ocean itself after breeding. Some duck species arrive on their wintering grounds while still in basic plumage, and the males molt fairly quickly into their beautiful alternate plumage. Other species, later migrants, molt farther north and arrive already in full color.

Almost as soon as the flocks arrive on their wintering grounds, the urge to mate kicks in, and the males begin to court the females. Those that arrive early wait until they have molted, but those that arrive late can begin the process immediately. Male ducks all have distinctive displays, which, coupled with their bright, species-specific colors, produce a dazzling show. Behavior involved in mating, both aggression and courtship display, is at its best in groups, with multiple individuals of both sexes.

Most male dabbling ducks have bright, contrasting markings around the head and breast and additional bright markings around their rear end. As soon as you see them display, you realize these color patterns are incorporated into the display. The displays are quite stereotyped, male Mallards, for example incorporating distinct display behaviors called Grunt-Whistle, Head-Up-Tail-Up, and Down-Up. Distinct behaviors are usually capitalized when written about in scientific literature.

Female Mallards perform head movements, bill-jabbing behavior, and characteristic vocalizations to indicate interest in copulating with a particular male. Females of most species will show aggression to males other than their mates. Copulation between pairs starts in the fall and continues through the winter into spring, when the birds return to their breeding grounds. Maintaining the pair bond seems to be the important function of this activity, which of course does not result in eggs being formed.

Displays in goldeneyes and mergansers are among the fanciest. In male goldeneyes, the head is thrown back almost onto the back, with a big splash when the feet kick back and an accompanying throaty note. In Red-breasted Mergansers, the male ends its display with tail down, back up, breast sinking into the water and neck extended upward with open beak, the whole thing reminiscent of some reptilian ancestor.

Some ducks rush along the water or fly short distances in their courtship. Buffleheads bob their heads violently up and down, fly just over the female and land by skiing on their bright pink feet, and cock both wings forward, exposing their big white patches. As part of their display, male Black Scoters also rush along the surface but with head down. A male Surf Scoter flies for 20-30 feet, wings whistling loudly, then drops feet-first into the water with wings raised. These display components are stereotyped in form and the order in which they are presented.

Because there is heavier predation on females when they are nesting, there are more male than female ducks in winter. Thus by spring there are still many unmated males. Courtship becomes even more intense, as gangs of male ducks roam around trying to find unmated females and spending much time harassing pairs to try to separate them (usually unsuccessfully). A lone female may be harassed by numerous males, and forced copulations are common at that time.

Finally, it’s time to make something of all that time spent mating. The pair heads off to wherever it is they breed, still maintaining that bond. They arrive, and the male has a fresh bunch of rivals to deter. The female quickly constructs a nest and lays her clutch of eggs, all the while shadowed by her mate. As soon as she begins to incubate, he leaves the scene and begins to hang out with other males in the same state. They typically move out into deeper water, begin their molt into basic plumage, and drop their flight feathers in preparation for growing a new set. It’s a new year in the odd annual cycle of a male duck.

Dennis Paulson

THE SNOW GEESE HAVE RETURNED

Here it is late October, and the Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens) have made their annual transhemispheric trip from Wrangel Island, off the north coast of Siberia, across the Bering Straits and down into North America. Up to 100,000 or more birds are thought to make this journey, without a doubt the largest crowd of emissaries from Russia to the United States. Forty thousand pairs are thought to breed on Wrangel Island, and they bring with them the young produced each year.

Half of these birds remain for the winter in the Fraser River and Skagit River valleys of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington, the other half continuing down to major wintering grounds in southern Oregon and California’s Central Valley. Many of the birds have been banded on Wrangel Island, and they bear conspicuous numbered plastic neck collars.

This migration, of very large numbers of birds moving from restricted nesting grounds to restricted wintering grounds, is typical of geese, which seem to function best in a highly social setting. They are herbivores, grazing on grasses and forbs in open areas, and there is usually more than enough food for all. If you’re a herbivore, the world is your breakfast (lunch, dinner) table! Especially if you can eat just about any kind of herbaceous green plant.

These large groups of geese probably facilitate mating (the young birds are surrounded by potential mates) and predator awareness (how could a potential predator sneak up on such a large number of eyes and ears?). The major predator of the Skagit Valley geese is the Bald Eagle, but predation is infrequent. Eagles probably get mostly sick and infirm birds, the ones that don’t make it into the air when an eagle flies over and flushes an entire flock (which may include thousands of birds).

On the nesting grounds on Wrangel Island, Arctic Foxes take their toll. But the greatest mortality source of our Snow Geese may be from hunting on their winter grounds. Birds wounded but not killed by shot probably fall victim to eagles and possibly other predators such as Coyotes. Nevertheless, hunting is strictly regulated and has negligible effect on the goose populations.

The average clutch of Snow Geese is about four eggs. Of them, 80% reach hatchling stage, and 75% of those reach fledging. Thus each pair of adults should produce on average about two young each year. Without heavy mortality, this would lead to a population increase, and that in fact is what is happening with Snow Geese throughout most of their range, leading to conservation and management problems. The widespread availability of agricultural land in winter and the opportunity to expand to new nesting areas in the Arctic combine to enhance population growth. The Wrangel Island population is an exception, having been stable in recent years.

Many immatures are evident in the Skagit flocks, in their distinctive gray plumage. The immatures attain adultlike plumage by the time they are one year old but do not breed until they are three years of age. The birds are censused annually, and the percentage of immatures in the wintering population is an easy way to measure breeding success in the previous summer. Young birds of this population pair during their third winter, and the pair stays together until one of them dies; life span may be two decades or more.

The Snow Geese of the Skagit Valley provide one of the most spectacular of wildlife spectacles in the state. Throughout each winter, carloads of people stop in designated parking areas and watch flocks, sometimes immense flocks, of the geese feeding and flying at pointblank range. They are surely the envy of groups of hunters waiting in vain in nearby fields with their “flocks” of decoys. The birds move between feeding areas, so there are often birds in the sky coming and going.

To see a V-formation of Snow Geese approach from high in the sky, then drop toward the ground by dumping air from under the wings, some of them even briefly upside-down, furnishes a thrill for all who are watching. At the last moment of their descent, the birds extend their webbed feet and spread their tail, as if putting on the brakes, flap vigorously, and settle to the ground. Heads down, they move slowly forward, biting off grass blades as they go. Grass is planted in wildlife management areas set aside for the geese.

These flocks should be checked for the so-called blue morph, previously thought to be a different species, the “Blue Goose.” This morph is common in the central Canadian breeding populations that winter in central United States but has always been rare in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently a few such birds have found their way into the Wrangel Island population, and we see them every winter. They are easily recognized by their dark body and white head; the immatures are much darker than typical Snow Geese.

Dennis Paulson

SWANS IN THE FARMLAND

The Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) formerly bred widely across the North American boreal forest, but by early in the 20^th century it hovered on the brink of extinction because of overhunting, Since then it has been rigorously protected and managed, and it has bounced back and continues to increase.

When I arrived in Washington, we made special trips up to the Bellingham area to see Trumpeters at one of a few lakes where small wintering populations persisted. With four decades of additional protection, now thousands of them can be found wintering all over western Washington. It’s nice to have as many pluses as we can to compensate for the many minuses we suffer in overall biodiversity!

But we also have another species of swan in Washington, the arctic-breeding Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus). That species has remained more common over the years just because it is much more wide-ranging, but its populations seem more or less stable now, not increasing like those of the Trumpeter.

Nowadays both of these swans can be seen in large numbers in winter in northwest Washington. Trumpeters tend to winter on wooded lakes, Tundras on salt water or larger, open lakes, but here in Skagit and Whatcom counties, they find most of their food in farmlands. Some of these farmlands are managed specifically for the swans and Snow Geese that furnish spectacular displays of white winter waterfowl.

The two swans tend to forage in single-species flocks, but they also mix from time to time, usually a few of one species associated with a larger flock of the other. How do we tell them apart?

Tundra Swans are only about two-thirds the size of Trumpeters, as measured by weight, but they have to be seen in close proximity to be compared in this way. Their linear measurements are not so different, and all swans look big!

Most Tundra Swans have a small yellow spot between eye and bill, lacking in Trumpeter, but some Tundras lack that spot and look much like Trumpeters. The best way to distinguish these birds is by looking at the base of the bill adjacent to the eye. That area is broad in Trumpeter, so the eye looks like part of the bill, while it is usually distinctly constricted before the eye in Tundra, making the eye stand out.

This different configuration of the bill can present a different appearance at a distance, even in flight.

Being larger, Trumpeters may mature at a slightly later age, and they change more slowly from the gray immature to the white adult. In their first winter, Tundra Swans molt in many white or whitish feathers, so by midwinter the immatures are quite whitish. Trumpeters don’t do this, so by midwinter they are still leaden gray. Thus looking at the immatures is a good way to identify the species present in a flock. Even the whitest immatures are easily distinguished from adults by their dusky head.

Finally, the swan species have very different voices. That of the Trumpeter is a low-pitched sound that could be compared with an off-key trumpet. That of the Tundra is a higher-pitched honking, somewhat more musical than that of the Trumpeter, that might be likened to a flock of geese.

Dennis Paulson

A COOT IS NOT A DUCK!

Next time you’re at the water, whether salt or fresh, watch for a ducklike bird with a gray body, darker head and neck, and white, chickenlike bill. You’re seeing an American Coot (Fulica americana). Coots are often thought to be waterfowl (i.e., a duck), but they are not. They are in the rail family, in the same avian order as cranes. These birds are only distantly related to waterfowl.

Coots are nonetheless interesting, even though they’re not ducks. They are rails that look like ducks because, over evolutionary time, they have come out of the marshes where rails are common and have become adapted morphologically and behaviorally for living a duck’s life. They swim like a duck and dive like a duck, but admittedly they don’t quack like a duck! The chickenlike bill is quite different from that of a duck. Ducks have sieve-like lamellae on the edges of their bill to allow a sort of filter-feeding, while coots just grab their prey items and swallow them.

To be able to swim well, coots have evolved lobed toes, much like those of grebes. Gallinules and moorhens, which are also rails and look much like coots, haven’t evolved the lobes, and they are rather intermediate between rails and coots, able to swim with their long toes even though they aren’t webbed or even lobed. Coots forage at the surface, dip below it somewhat as ducks do, and dive underwater in deeper water. They don't stay down very long, popping up like a cork after a brief visit to the nearest vegetation.

Coots breed locally in the Puget Sound area but more commonly in the dry interior, where they are on most freshwater wetlands. They prefer ponds and lakes with both dense marsh vegetation, from which they get material to construct their nests, and plenty of open water, where they feed. They migrate to larger lakes in the winter, where they form flocks, sometimes large ones. Poor fliers, they migrate at night, probably to avoid predation by bird-eating hawks.

Coots are much more tied to a herbivorous diet than are rails. Their principal foods in fresh water are pondweeds, algae, sedges, and grasses, although a wide variety of other plants are taken. Filamentous submergent plants seem to be favored overall. They also eat small numbers of freshwater invertebrates, especially in the breeding season. The young are fed almost entirely on animal matter. When seen in small numbers on salt water, they may be utilizing green algae such as sea lettuce.

Coots also leave the water to graze on land, and they are commonly seen doing so adjacent to city park lakes. They retain some of their rail heritage in being better walkers than ducks, and when disturbed, they can run over land. They are much less well adapted to flight than ducks are, and they have to make long take-off runs to get off the water, and then fly awkwardly. When Bald Eagles harass them, they cannot escape by flying, and a pair of eagles can tire out a diving coot fairly quickly and then share the meal.

Coots are feisty birds, very territorial in breeding season and inclined to chase just about any other birds of their own or other species away from their nesting areas. They display with both their white bill and white undertail coverts, then they may fight fiercely, locking feet and pecking each other. They do manage to get along with their mates, and they make big, sloppy floating nests out of marsh vegetation. They lay a lot of eggs, a typical clutch size being around 7 but often up to 10 or more. The young are semiprecocial, able to get around on their own but still having to be fed by the adults. They are strikingly colored in comparison with the drab adults.

Dennis Paulson