Note: the light was just awful that morning so these images are of poor quality but they’re good enough to document the behavior<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/canvasback-0767-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canvasback-0767-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
The fish was originally in the possession of a coot but after an extended pursuit and struggle the Canvasback ended up with it. Several coots pursued the duck as it attempted to swallow the fish but their attempts at stealing it back were only half-hearted, probably because Canvasbacks are almost twice the size of coots.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/canvasback-0817-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canvasback-0817-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
The duck had an extremely difficult time swallowing the fish but it eventually got it down immediately after this photo was taken. I suspect the source of the difficulty was that\u00a0Canvasback bills, mouths and throats aren’t well adapted to swallowing food items this size. I’d estimate that the duck attempted to swallow the fish about a dozen times before it finally succeeded.<\/p>\n
This fish caused a lot of excitement that morning among bird species that don’t\u00a0typically eat fish. Coots are known to eat them occasionally but a male Gadwall also tried to steal this fish from the coots and Gadwalls eating fish is almost as unusual as Canvasbacks doing the same thing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I suspect this is a story about the value of adaptability. In the 1950’s fully one half of the entire North American population of Canvasbacks wintered on Chesapeake Bay where they fed almost exclusively on SAV (submerged aquatic vegetation). But by 1985 Canvasback numbers on Chesapeake Bay were\u00a0reduced to only about 10% of their historical\u00a0winter population and scientists attribute that decline to the destruction of SAV acreage caused by development and other human intrusions. But today their population has stabilized and is even increasing\u00a0because by the 1970’s Canvasbacks had adapted to eating Baltic Clams which are extremely common in the bay. Clams\u00a0now make up 80%\u00a0of their winter diet.<\/p>\n
So\u00a0Canvasbacks survived the\u00a0destruction of their major food source by being adaptable and changing their diet. Redheads, which also feed\u00a0primarily on SAV tubers, have not been able to adapt so their population remains low.<\/p>\n
Adaptability is the key to survival in a changing environment. Just ask any skunk, coyote, fox,\u00a0house mouse, crow or bedbug about that.<\/p>\n
But you\u00a0can’t ask a Passenger Pigeon for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A behavior I’d never heard of, seen or photographed until last week. I believe this to be a story of adaptability and survival.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,334,364,8,392],"tags":[3783,3785,49,70,3786,3784,107,2651,211,3781,3782],"class_list":["post-55303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-canvasbacks","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-adaptations-for-survival","tag-baltic-clam","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-canvasback","tag-changing-diet","tag-chesapeake-bay","tag-diet","tag-eating-fish","tag-male","tag-sav","tag-submerged-aquatic-vegetation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/canvasback-0767-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-enZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}