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On a visit yesterday after work to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn I happened across this female Red-breasted Merganser that I initially thought was in the midst of struggling to swallow a nasty chunk of some kind of marine life. It quickly became apparent, however, that the bird was having a hard time getting her [...]

One of the sweetest subsections of the duck family has to be the sawbills, formally known as mergansers. Mergansers are a family of diving waterfowl in Merginae, the seaduck subfamily of Anatidae. Ironically, only one of these seaducks is truly a seafarer, the others favoring rivers and lakes. The name ‘merganser’ is said to have [...]

It goes without saying that our three breeding species of mergansers in the United States are amongst the most brilliantly colored birds we have. Common, Hooded and Red-breasted Mergansers all breed here, but Red-breasted is the more northerly of the group. Red-breasted Mergansers occupy most of Canada and into Alaska for breeding with some of the norther [...]

Common Merganser (Mergus merganser) photos by Larry Jordan (click to enlarge) The Common Merganser (Mergus merganser americanus) or Goosander (Mergus merganser merganser) as it’s known in Europe, is a large, cold-hardy, fish-eating duck that nests worldwide near large lakes and rivers in northern forested habitats1. yellow:summer, blue:winter, green:year-round They nest in cavities, beginning in March or April, usually in trees [...]