{"id":80731,"date":"2020-01-17T06:21:30","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T13:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=80731"},"modified":"2020-01-17T06:46:35","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T13:46:35","slug":"male-and-female-hooded-mergansers-with-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/17\/male-and-female-hooded-mergansers-with-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Male And Female Hooded Mergansers With Fish…"},"content":{"rendered":"

and not in the mood for sharing.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Almost exactly one year ago I spent some time with a pair of Hooded Mergansers who were both actively fishing at one of the local ponds I frequent. I believe they were a mated pair because this species is seasonally monogamous, they pair up as early as November and most of the time these two birds acted as if they were bonded.<\/p>\n

Both mergansers were excellent fishermen. In my time with them each of them caught three or four fish and every one of them was a Weather Loach (Dojo Loach), an eel-like invasive species that now populates many of our inland waterways across the country. It is believed that Weather Loaches gained their foothold in our ponds and streams from illegal releases by home aquarists (people who keep tropical fish in aquariums).<\/p>\n

This is the female merganser with an unusually large loach – most are smaller than this. Loaches are a writhing, squirming mouthful to try to get down the hatch.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Not to be outdone her mate caught an even larger loach, perhaps the largest I’ve ever seen and I’ve photographed many bird species eating loaches.<\/p>\n

This male was swimming fast for very good reason. Most times he caught a fish his mate tried to steal it. Truly, the female merganser reminded me of my ex-wife who was constantly stealing food off of my plate whenever we ate out. I remember thinking about that comparison while I was photographing these birds.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the male has caught a more typically sized loach and his mate has her eye on it. Typically her strategy for fish-stealing wasn’t direct confrontation. Instead she would look all innocent and then…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

dive with the intention of surfacing directly in front of her mate and quickly snatching his fish. Just from the look on his face it’s obvious that he was fully aware of what she intended to do.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

So every time he caught a fish he tried to put a comfortable distance between them before he attempted to swallow his squirming and slippery meal. Even though she was persistent he was usually, perhaps always, successful in holding on to his fish and eventually gulping it down.<\/p>\n

Hooded Mergansers are visual underwater foragers and their eyesight in water is unusually good. Unlike many ducks they can “dramatically alter the refractive properties of their eyes through accommodative lens changes” which corrects the challenges of refraction in water.<\/p>\n

When combined with their unusually transparent nictitating membranes (seen in the 4th photo above) they’re extremely well adapted to finding and pursuing underwater prey, including but not limited to just fish.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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and not in the mood for sharing.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80735,"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":[334,392,4406],"tags":[4916,111,137,141,4918,1430,3207,211,4915,4917,320],"class_list":["post-80731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-hooded-mergansers","tag-alter-refractive-qualities-of-their-eyes","tag-dojo-loach","tag-female","tag-fish","tag-fish-aquarists","tag-kleptoparasitism","tag-lophodytes-cucullatus","tag-male","tag-nooded-merganser","tag-tropical-fish","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/hooded-merganser-8507-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-l07","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80731","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=80731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}