{"id":68159,"date":"2019-01-15T05:02:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T12:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=68159"},"modified":"2019-01-15T07:15:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:15:15","slug":"two-hooded-mergansers-a-fish-and-a-possible-behavioral-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/15\/two-hooded-mergansers-a-fish-and-a-possible-behavioral-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Hooded Mergansers, A Fish And A Possible Behavioral Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe, just maybe, the motivation for this behavior isn’t so obvious after all…?<\/p>\n

Those who saw yesterday’s post<\/a> know I had a very rewarding session with a mated pair of Hooded Mergansers two days ago. Most of the time the two of them were real lovebirds, never getting further away from each other than a few feet no matter where they went or what they were doing including fishing, resting in the water or on logs and moving away from potential threats (they were extremely wary and shy). They stuck to each other like glue.<\/p>\n

But I just can’t quite be confident of what the motivation was for one of their behaviors that was contrary to everything else I saw. I’ll document it with photos and then at the end explain my confusion. Some of the images are of mediocre to poor quality because of very fast-moving birds, subjects who turned their backs to me, poor lighting because they moved into the shade of nearby plants with the sun low in the sky and good ol’ operator error (the cameraman screwed up).<\/p>\n

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I had my lens on the female when I saw her accelerating to my right toward the general area where I knew the male was. I immediately wondered if she was going after a fish he might have caught while I was watching her.<\/p>\n

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I was right, he’d just caught a weather loach. Most fish that birds of various species catch in this area are weather loaches. This was one of the larger loaches I’ve seen and…<\/p>\n

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he was having trouble hanging on to it, much less getting it down the hatch.<\/p>\n

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And to add to his troubles his lovely bride was after his meal – that’s her bill coming into the frame at left in a different crop of the previous image.<\/p>\n

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So he made a sharp left turn and fired his afterburners in order to escape the threat to his meal but she was hot on his heels.<\/p>\n

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But then….. something strange. He dropped the fish, apparently deliberately (notice he’s stopped swimming away from her), and she dived to retrieve it.<\/p>\n

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And she got it too, which he obviously allowed. He seemed to be watching with acceptance, at least at first.<\/p>\n

But she had even more trouble than he did getting it down and eventually…<\/p>\n

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he somehow ended up with it again. The action during the exchange process (voluntary or involuntary) was fast and furious and I believe part of it was underwater so I didn’t get any shots that documented how it happened. But it did.<\/p>\n

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But the male couldn’t swallow that big loach quickly either…<\/p>\n

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especially with the female still tracking him with what appeared to be less than honorable intentions.<\/p>\n

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Her pursuit was slow but relentless and it seemed obvious that, at least at this point, he felt her intense interest threatened his meal.<\/p>\n

By now both birds were far away so I stopped photographing them and don’t know what happened after I took this shot. I wish I’d continued firing away in an attempt to document the conclusion but I didn’t. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.<\/p>\n

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At first glance I assumed this encounter was nothing more than competition for food among mates with alternating “winners” but after looking carefully at these and other photos and upon reflection I’m not so sure. Consider the following:<\/p>\n