Hooded Mergansers - Harle couronné
Early one morning, on the Ottawa River before freeze-up, a pair of Hooded Mergansers drift westward against the current. Perhaps because of hunting (the kind of hunting where shooting birds seems more important than eating them, because Mergansers are not prized eating ducks) they are incredibly skittish. I was lying behind a fallen tree on the shore, and although the male sensed something, he remained calm, and they drifted along, their purpose a mystery.
This species, whose scientific name means ‘crested diver’, is the only Merganser species found naturally in North America only (aside from some wandering birds showing up in the UK from time to time.
And as always la province de Québec remains to the north of us, across the River.
I just spent two weeks trapped in a hotel in Calgary trying to prevent and then trying to end a significant work stoppage in Canada, and nothing seems more restorative than the possibility of getting out into a gradually melting forest. Or lying alongside the River.
Hooded Mergansers - Harle couronné
Early one morning, on the Ottawa River before freeze-up, a pair of Hooded Mergansers drift westward against the current. Perhaps because of hunting (the kind of hunting where shooting birds seems more important than eating them, because Mergansers are not prized eating ducks) they are incredibly skittish. I was lying behind a fallen tree on the shore, and although the male sensed something, he remained calm, and they drifted along, their purpose a mystery.
This species, whose scientific name means ‘crested diver’, is the only Merganser species found naturally in North America only (aside from some wandering birds showing up in the UK from time to time.
And as always la province de Québec remains to the north of us, across the River.
I just spent two weeks trapped in a hotel in Calgary trying to prevent and then trying to end a significant work stoppage in Canada, and nothing seems more restorative than the possibility of getting out into a gradually melting forest. Or lying alongside the River.