What if we start the week with some cute animal behavior, just to get things onto the right foot, and to celebrate my recovery from a temporary bug? We shall have otters and ducks.
I had no idea that otters had to be taught to swim, but for North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) that’s apparently the case. This is a squeeish video, but also instructional, for it shows a mother otter at the Oregon Zoo not only dragging its pup into the water and swimming with it, but also plunging it below the surface to show it the meaning of “dive”:
Wood ducks (Aix sponsa) are the most beautiful of all ducks, and one of the most beautiful of all birds. I’m referring to the males, because although the females are handsome, too, the males, courtesy of sexual selection, boast a gorgeous raiment of green, violet, white, black, and brown; and they have red eyes, a chestnut breast dotted with white, a gorgeous green crest lined with black and white, and a multicolored bill. (See photos below.). They’re found in both the eastern and western US and in western Mexico, nest in tree cavities near the water, and are the only North American duck that can produce two broods per year.
When the young hatch up in the treeholes, they face the problem of getting to the water. Here’s how they do it, courtesy of National Geographic:
Look at that male!
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology notes that wood ducks sometimes nest near but not on the water (up to 140 m away), and the young must then make that leap to the ground itself. Apparently they can jump successfully from heights up to 89 meters (290 feet!)—after all, they’re just fluffballs).
You can hear various calls of the wood duck here; be sure to listen to the “male jeeb call.”
h/t: Matthew Cobb, SGM
I love the fact that the recording of the male ‘jeeb’ call is as old as I am! This raises an issue – has there been any drift in the song over time? There’s evidence that songbirds in the UK are changing their song to cope with traffic noise (there’s both an innate and a learned/cultural/dialect component to the song). Does a jeeb call sound exactly the same today?
I guess otters subscribe to the “tough love” school of parenting, fascinating.
That reminds me of this video of a young duck following around an animal of unknown species whose markings and means of locomotion are one of a kind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2HU3LGdbo
I noted that the narrator said that all 11 ducklings had joined “mom” in the pond by jumping from the tree. She looks very proud, but do you suppose she would notice if only, say, 9 or 10 had made the leap?
Wonderful post. I played all the bird call recordings at once… interesting effect. 🙂
Great video, but it just makes me realise how hard it’s going to be replacing David Attenborough when he finally stops broadcasting. I certainly miss his measured tones here.
Finally, a duck post. While wood ducks are very nice, it isn’t clear that they’re the most beautiful of all ducks. I was just at the San Diego Zoo, where I saw some very attractive ducks: harlequin duck, smew, African pygmy goose, falcated duck, cinnamon teal, hooded merganser. Hard to choose, really. And what about the mandarin duck? Too flashy for you?
How much courage I’d need is irrelevant, since my instincts are not adapted for flight by millions of years of evolution. You might as well ask how much courage it takes for a fish to swim, or a snake to slither.
And we won’t even get into the completely bogus “human equivalent of 30 feet or more!”
But hey, it’s National Geographic, what do you expect.
Yeah, I found the National Geographic commentary silly, trivial, annoying… all that stuff. Pity, they used to be a halfway decent magazine, decades ago before they got brainrot.
Incidentally, I doubt whether it makes much difference whether the ducks jump 15 feet or 30 (or 60), I suspect they reach duckling-terminal-velocity within a few feet.
When I lived in Illinois, there were woods behind my house, and a lake some distance away. One day a female wood duck, and four duckings, came out of the woods and up my driveway headed toward the lake. Both my cats were out and got very interested. The duckings froze under a bush and the mother did the broken wing thing. She led my cats two houses away down the street. She came back without them and led the ducklings across the road toward the lake. I was impressed!
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Best for entertainment at New York Zoo otters enclosure is not the otters, but the religious parents ushering their children away when they realise the otters are mating.. “Mom, what are they doing?”, “Oh they’re just playing. Quick, let’s get over to the sea lions for feeding time!”