Some days this blogging lark really is tough. I mean, I get to Toronto, it’s cold, and instead of being able to pass the time watching a fascinating TV channel all about the spending of local government in Mississauga I feel compelled to force myself to make the 10 minute walk down to the Toronto Harbourfront to see if there any Long-tailed Ducks Clangula hyemalis in yet…Come on, who wants to spend a couple of hours in the sunshine getting fantastic views of yodelling flocks of one of the world’s most beautiful ducks anyway…

Who? Well that would be me of course. And when I say “fantastic views” I really do mean ‘fantastic’. Good views of Long-tailed Ducks where I live in the UK means seeing one or two little blobs being buffeted by the wind or being run over by windsurfers out in the middle of Weymouth Harbour…good views in Toronto means watching them down to a few metres off a jetty with the CN Tower pricking the sky behind. I’ve never been anywhere else that makes seeing Long-tailed Ducks so easy and rewarding: yes, I guess there will be harbours much further north where they gather close to shore, but - hey - Toronto, hardly an isolated city miles from anywhere, eh?

Non-breeding male Long-tailed Ducks

Close up Long-tailed Ducks really are beautiful birds. Many ducks are (IMHO anyway) but LTDs are a class apart - coloured like they’ve been dabbed with frost, stubby-billed, plump-chested, and swooningly gorgeous. And their calls are evocative of the distant, wide-open expanses that I long to spend weeks exploring - a sort of musical “Ow-uhwawa” that flocks give in unison (often then diving in unison too: listen to the mp3 below - by clicking anywhere on the image - and you can hear the plop of Long-tailed Ducks diving beneath the icy water at the end of the clip).

Long-tailed Ducks breed mainly in in tundra pools and marshes, but also along sea coasts and in large mountain lakes in the North Atlantic region, Alaska, northern Canada, northern Europe and Russia - mostly a long way from where most birders can get to see them. Wintering flocks do give the average birder a chance to observe males and females (in non-breeding plumages at this time of year of course) next to each other and really study the differences between them.

Much in the same way that adult male Surf Scoters (which I also looked at in a recent post) are pretty much unmistakeable, most birders will recognise an adult male Long-tailed Duck - apart from anything it has very long tail feathers, a sprig of bare shafts almost as long as the bird’s body that are often held like needles pointing skywards. Not all LTDs are adult males though of course, and this little duck does come in quite a range of colours.

Here’s a selection of non-breeding Long-tailed Ducks I took this morning: note that despite the similarity of some young males and females when they’re still moulting, males tend have white crowns and multi-coloured bills, whilst females have dark crowns and all-dark bills. Note also that Long-tailed Ducks are amongst the few anatid species to have all dark wings with no wingbars or coloured specula (NB Black (American) Scoter Melanitta americana is another, and the two do occur together so it’s not the fail-safe ID criterion it might otherwise be).

Non-breeding adult male Long-tailed Ducks

Two non-breeding adult male Long-tailed Ducks (foreground)
and non-breeding female

Non-breeding adult female Long-tailed Duck

Immature male Long-tailed Ducks (note the mottled but pale crowns, pinkish areas
of the bill. and the growing lanceolate mantle feathers)

The following two birds are not so clear-cut, but I think the first is an immature male (based on the bill colour) and the second an immature female although they do look very similar. I’d welcome any comments of course.

Immature male Long-tailed Duck

Immature female Long-tailed Duck

There was one thing I’d read about Long-tailed Ducks that I wanted to check out for myself. According to numerous sources I’d seen Long-tailed Ducks have apparently never learnt to land on water using their feet like brakes as so many other wildfowl species do. Instead they just belly-flop down in a fountain of water. And you know what? It’s absolutely true!

Whilst they fly much like any other small duck - ie powerfully and quickly - they do indeed come in low over the water and just splosh down as if they’re reluctant to get their feet wet. In fact, if they hit a wave they bounce like stones skipping across the water before coming down in a spray of water droplets. Why they choose to land like this I really don’t know (one thought that occurred to me, though, is that perhaps it’s an adaptation to landing in winter on water that might be partly-frozen: heavier geese and swans would smash thin ice on landing, but these much smaller and lighter ducks might risk damaging their feet?), but it’s amusingly inelegant and well worth seeing for yourself…and I’d swear that the Long-tailed Ducks themselves float around shaking their heads and laughing at each other when one of their kin splash down close to them: check out the expressions of the birds below…

So there you go. If you find yourself in Toronto in winter with just an hour or so to spare you could do far worse than walk down to the lakefront and get some fabulous views of one of the prettiest ducks on the planet, don’t you think?

More information (adapted from the Birdlife International website at http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/index.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=490&m=0)

This species is fully migratory although its movements are poorly understood. It breeds from late-May onwards in single pairs or loose groups, the males leaving the females soon after the start of incubation (between late-June and early-September) to gather in small flocks for a flightless moulting period. Some populations undergo extensive moult migrations of up to 1,000 km, while others moult on waters near the breeding grounds. Females moult between early-August and early-October on the breeding grounds, often abandoning their young at the start of the moult (the ducklings then gather into large parentless groups). The southward autumn migration occurs from September to October after the post-breeding moult and non-breeders may oversummer in the wintering areas. Outside of the breeding season the species is highly gregarious, in winter gathering into large aggregations of perhaps several tens of thousands of individuals to roost or to feed in inshore and offshore waters.

The species regularly dives to depths of 3-10 m when foraging (maximum depth 50-60 m) and is diurnal.

Long-tailed Ducks winters at sea, generally far offshore in waters 10-35 m deep, as well as in saline, brackish or fresh estuarine waters, brackish lagoons, and inland (very rarely) on large, deep freshwater lakes. The species show a preference for marine foods during both the breeding and non-breeding seasons, its diet consisting predominantly of animal matter such as crustaceans (e.g. amphipods and cladocerans), molluscs, other marine invertebrates (e.g. echinoderms, worms) and fish. They also takes freshwater insects and insect larvae as well as plant material such as algae, grasses, and the seeds and fruits of tundra plants.

This species has a large range, with an estimated global Extent of Occurrence of 100,000-1,000,000 km². It has a large global population estimated to be 7,200,000-7,800,000 individuals (Wetlands International 2002). Global population trends have not been quantified, but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern.

Threats: The species is threatened by wetland habitat degradation and loss from petroleum pollution, wetland drainage and peat-extraction. It is also threatened with direct mortality from oil pollution, drowning through entanglement in fishing nets, and from hunting on migration routes over certain regions of the Arctic. The species has previously suffered heavy losses from an outbreak of avian cholera and is susceptible to avian influenza so may be threatened by future outbreaks of these diseases.

Toronto Harbourfront, November 2008

All photographs and soundfile copyright Charlie Moores 2008

This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly #13. Go check it out!