Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We had an unexpected snowstorm last night, dropping less than an inch but still covering the ground, as it’s below freezing. Fortunately the weather has warmed up today.
Armon and Vashti were starving this morning because of the cold, and were waiting for me at the “feeding spot” at the north end of Botany Pond. They had a huge breakfast, and gave me the gift of their tracks in the snow. This is the only way I know they walk around on the ground when I’m not there.
I can’t get enough of Duck Tracks in the Snow. In fact, that would be a good title for a song. . .
Yep, my babies are trotting around in the snow. Fortunately, they have a kind patron who feeds them twice a day. Armon and Vashti are still here, and what reason would they have to go, given that they are fed two big square meals a day: nutritious duck pellets for main and tasty freeze-dried mealworms for dessert?
They are looking good, and Vashti seems positively plump.
It appears that the bonded pair of mallards at Botany Pond are here for the long term. Every morning they are waiting at the same spot for their breakfast, and in the afternoon they snooze on the rocks but swim to me for their late lunch when I whistle. Further, I saw two of our five red-eared slider turtles yesterday, swimming and sunning in the warmer weather. Here are a few photos and a video at bottom.
It seems that the ducks are residents now, and so it’s time to name them. As with last year, they appeared on the Jewish holiday of Purim and thus needed Jewish, Purim-related names. My friend Peggy Mason, co-duck-tender, scoured the Purim literature to give the ducks names (we don’t name them until we’re sure they’re going to hang around). The hen (not Esther, as I ascertained from photos published previously), is now called Vashti, named after a character in the Purim story:
Vashti (Hebrew: וַשְׁתִּי, romanized: Vaštī; Koine Greek: Ἀστίν, romanized: Astín; Modern Persian: وشتی, romanized: Vâšti) was a queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included within the Tanakh and the Old Testament which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. She was either executed or banished for her refusal to appear at the king’s banquet to show her beauty as Ahasuerus wished, and was succeeded as queen by Esther, a Jew. That refusal might be better understood via the Jewish tradition that she was ordered to appear naked. In the Midrash, Vashti is described as beautiful but wicked and vain; she is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist theological interpretations of the Purim story.
That seems fairly appropriate given that there’s no other woman in the story save the heroine Esther, who saved the Jews.
A name for the drake was tougher, as the only other notable male in the Purim story is the wicked Haman, who tried to get the King to exterminate the Jews (Esther foiled that plot). And we can’t have a drake named after a genocidal maniac. Scouring the story and remembering her Hebrew, Peggy suggested the name Armon, which means “palace” or “fortress” in Hebrew. That’s where the whole Purim story took place. Fortunately, it’s also a Jewish man’s name, and short.
Ergo the hen and drake are now Vashti and Armon, respectively. I’ll have to do some explaining when visitors ask me the ducks’ names and how they got them. But it is cool that last year’s and this year’s ducks both arrived on Purim, though the holidays are two weeks displaced from 2025 to 2026.
Click the pictures below if you want to enlarge them.
Aaaaaand. . . here’s the pair together. I think they make quite the handsome couple:
The lovely Vashti, hopefully destined to produce this year’s brood of ducklings. Here she’s preening, sunning, and sleeping in the warm sun of Sunday:
And the regal Armon, swimming and napping:
We put five large red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) into the pond last fall, and hoped they’d hibernate in custom turtle houses put on the pebble-y bottom. Apparently they did, as we’ve seen no bodies floating on the water. (These were five turtles saved and put in a southern Illinois pond when Botany Pond was renovated several years ago. I believe five more evacuees will come home again this Spring.)
It’s been too cold for them to show up, but yesterday I found a big one blithely sunning himself on a rock, stretching out his limbs to get the sun. (Turtles’ heads and legs are their solar panels, used to warm up the body.) Later I saw another one’s head above the water surface as it was swimming around. So we know we have at least two. Here’s the sunbather:
This is near the northern limit of the species’ distribution, as the eggs can’t survive very cold winters.
So we have our turtles and ducks: all is in place for a lovely Spring and Summer.
And a lousy movie of Armon and Vashti preening themselves after having lunch:
More good news: I’m told the duck camera, which has been re-installed, will be activated this week. Stay tuned for the link!
Send in your good wildlife photos, as I’m out save for singletons and doubletons.
Today’s photos come from reader Jan Malik from New Jersey and are geese and DUCKS. The captions and ID’s are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here are some Barnegat Inlet ducks (and other visitors) from the last day of this February.
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) and Brant (Branta bernicla) in flight. Same genus, similar body form, and a fairly recent common ancestor—only about 1–2 MYA in Pleistocene North America. Anne Elk’s (Mrs.) theory about brontosauruses could be adapted to geese: they are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end. My new theory is that these two species split when the Laurentide Ice Sheet separated the American coast from the inland regions. The Brant specialized in coastal habitats and feeding on seaweeds, while the Canada Goose evolved inland, feeding mostly on herbs and grasses. Perhaps this theory is not new. Or not mine.
Arguably the biggest stars of the winter Barnegat Inlet are the Harlequin Ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus). The drakes’ plumage is so dramatic—and their calls so comical (resembling a bath rubber ducky)—that many people come to Barnegat Light just to see them. The hens’ coloration is more subdued but still lovely.
Every year I see them bobbing along the jetty, sometimes tossed around by heavy seas but always masterfully avoiding the rocks. They seem attracted to heavy surf and avoid the open sea. They stay mostly in a loose flock, which in recent years appears to have declined from 20–30 ducks in 2010 to just 10–15 in the last couple of years.
Drake:
They can preen while in the water, but they do catch a breather by climbing onto slippery rocks. Their feet are set a bit farther back, like in other diving ducks, but they can walk on land—although a bit awkwardly. By late February most of them are gone, heading back north to their nesting grounds on Labrador’s whitewater rivers and streams:
Like other diving ducks, they dip their heads before diving for fish. My other theory—Theory Number Two—is that by doing so they defeat the air–water interface diffraction and better locate prey:
They are exceptionally buoyant, which makes sense given their rocky surf habitat, but it also means they must put extra effort into diving. They have to jump slightly into the air before the dive to gain momentum, then use their wings as paddles to become submerged:
I once heard that the difference between geese and ducks is that ducks can launch themselves directly into the air from a resting position, while geese need to run for a while, either on water or land. This is probably true for dabbling ducks (like Mallards), but a Harlequin—with its feet set back a bit—must run some distance to become airborne:
Another common winter visitor: the Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator), drake. Their bill serration is more pronounced than in other diving ducks, helping them catch fish:
Merganser hen. These are the most sea-loving mergansers. The other two I’m familiar with—Common and Hooded Mergansers—rarely appear in coastal waters. They are said to be very active underwater predators pursuing fish, but I’ve never seen that myself:
Common Eider (Somateria mollissima), probably an immature drake in transitional plumage. They are quite large and plump, which—together with the proverbial “eider down”—makes them well adapted to nesting in the Arctic. Reportedly, hens with ducklings may form crèches on their nesting grounds (a defense against polar foxes and skuas perhaps?) One day I must see that:
Today we have some singletons, doubletons, and tripletons from readers: that is, miscellaneous photos. The IDs and captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
From reader Jay, a photo from St. Augustine beach, Florida:
This photo shows two terns (possibly Royal Terns, Thalasseus maximus), in front of four Black Skimmers (Rynchops niger).
From Keira McKenzie:
These photos were taken on a warm afternoon in Hyde Park [Sydney, Australia], sitting beneath the plane trees at the eastern end of the park.
Here you have Australian WhiteIbis (Threskiornis molucca, commonly referred to as bin chickens here—which is a bit rude. In the second picture it’s with an Australian wood duck (Threskiornis molucca; there is quite the family here in all their regimental delight), both birds roosting on the island in the eastern pond in the park. While most of the undergrowth was cleared, these birds still manage to find somewhere to roost. The ibis lost their favourite tree in the clearing process, but they have found others. The wood ducks seem happy as well and I love watching the family being marshalled for the march up to the lawns to either graze or look for beetles or whatever. When they come back to the ponds, they fly in a ragged formation careless of persons what might be sitting there chatting and drinking coffee!
And the egret: it’s a Great Egret, either Ardea alba (the western Australian one) or the equally common Ardea modesta: the Eastern Great Egret (subspecies modesta) . The reason I can’t decide is their are supposed to have black legs, but my photos all have them having yellowish legs which doesn’t come up in any descriptions.
I’ve added a pic of the little Baba Yaga in her outside tiger pen just to make you smile (she is currently yelling at me to come to bed!)
And Daniel Baleckaitis, who works for both our department and Organismal Biology and Anatomy, sent three mallard pictures (Anas platyrhynchos)—taken in Botany Pond! I don’t know the ducks but the pictures are great (and clearly taken a few years back when the pond was full of vegetation):
This morning a friend who works in the department office called me and said “there are two ducks in the pond.” I instantly knew that this would be a male/female pair of mallards scoping out the pond as a potential nesting and rearing site. Within one minute I grabbed my camera and my container of adult duck food (I saved it from last year; I have plenty and it’s still good), and ran down to the pond.
Sure enough, there was a pair of mallards at the far (south) end. Moreover, then swam near me when I whistled, though they didn’t come right up to me. This suggests that these are the mallards knew me, though, based on bill patterns in the hen, I don’t think they are Esther and Mordecai from last year.
Those ducks were named because they arrived on the Jewish holiday of Purim, and, sure enough, that holiday is tomorrow. These are again Jewish ducks and will have to be named accordingly.
I am so happy. There is no guarantee they’ll stay, but food is thin on the pond, and I am making sure they know it is a place to get a nice meal. After filling their tummies, they retired back to the south end for a rest.
Photos. First, the pair (name suggestions welcome, especially Jewish-themed names—but not Mordecai and Esther):
The hen:
The hen eating (out of focus). They were hungry!
The drake, dripping water from his bill after having eating a food pellet (I give them only the best):
The hen’s bill:
This is Esther from last year. The bill pattern of today’s hen is clearly different, so the hen we have now is not Esther. But there’s no guarantee that this one will breed here (remember, Esther was our first ground-nesting female). Note that today’s duck lacks Esther’s black markings on the top and tip of her bill, and those should have remained over a year.
We have a timely contribution, and a bit of duck-related drama in New Jersey, from Jan Malik, whose captions and story are indented below. (The duck was, in the end, unharmed.) You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here is a short series of pictures from Barnegat Light that I took about twelve years ago. I was sitting on the rock jetty one February day, scanning for any passing seabirds, when something in the corner of my eye caught my attention: a commotion farther out in the inlet channel. A duck was being attacked by a large gull.
Trigger warning and spoiler alert: the gull went hungry— the duck escaped that morning.
This isn’t the actual bird that was attacked; I think I photographed this one later that day. But like the victim, it was probably an immature male. Long‑tailed Ducks form large flocks outside the breeding season, wintering offshore from the Arctic Ocean, Norway, Greenland, and Canada, and reaching New Jersey when the weather turns especially cold. Unfortunately, their IUCN status is Vulnerable, and based on my very unscientific observations over twenty years of winter trips to the Jersey shore, their numbers seem to be declining.
These gulls—the largest species in the family Laridae—are powerful scavengers and opportunistic predators. I don’t see them often at Barnegat Light or other exposed coastal areas; they seem to prefer city dumps and places with more edible refuse than the clean, wind‑swept inlet.
Each bird pulls in a different direction. The duck tries to dive, while the gull attempts to lift its prey and carry it to land, where it can kill it properly by violent shaking.
Given the size difference, the duck can’t fight back All it can do is try to slip free:
A second gull arrives The possibility of a meal attracts another gull, which immediately tries to steal the catch. This actually helps the duck—when raptors (if we can stretch the term to include gulls) quarrel over prey, they often drop it:
The gull’s grip is weak. Here it’s clear that not all is lost for the duck. The gull’s smooth, non‑serrated bill has only a tenuous hold on the duck’s feathers, and it’s far from securing a proper grip:
The gull’s feet offer no help. Like other gulls, Great Black‑backed Gulls have webbed feet built for paddling, not grasping. Their only real weapon is the bill, and in this case it wasn’t placed well enough to subdue the duck:
The hunt ends unsuccessfully. The duck breaks free and immediately dives. Long‑tailed Ducks can dive 100–200 feet (30–60 m) and swim underwater using both their feet and wings, much like penguins:
Another Long‑tailed Duck in flight. I include this photo to show why the species is called “long‑tailed,” although this individual doesn’t have the longest tail I’ve seen. These ducks were once called “Oldsquaw” in the United States and “Old Wife” in parts of England, but in the early 2000s the name was changed because it was considered offensive. I agree with the change, though I sometimes wonder whether it marked the beginning of the slippery slope that later led to Audubon being “canceled” and many other biological names being flagged as candidates for revision.
