The sun was shining, there was hardly a cloud in the sky, and although the occasional wind gust sent wavelets splashing against the black, wooden pilings, the scene was calm and peaceful. Out on the river a tugboat was towing a massive barge. The tug must have passed through a more disturbed stretch of water farther upstream, for the spray that had blown back from the bow had frozen and coated the entire vessel with ice. As it flashed and glittered in the sunshine the ice looked like the frosting on a cake.

I watched the tug and its tow slowly heading downstream, and suddenly was aware of a dark looking bird sitting on the water perhaps a hundred yards out from shore. My binoculars showed it to be one of the Red-breasted Mergansers that had returned from their breeding grounds farther north to spend the winter in the vicinity of the Cove. I had spotted the first one back on December 5, and from then on saw anywhere from one to eleven of them almost every day. They stayed with us until the spring and then left to nest farther north.

All ducks are handsome creatures, but some of them seem especially attractive looking. Among these are the Mergansers, a small group of ducks represented by only three species here in North America: Red-breasted, Hooded, and the Common Merganser. Mergansers are diving ducks; they feed by submerging and obtaining their food under water. However, unlike other ducks which feed mostly on mollusks, crustaceans or aquatic insects, Mergansers specialize in preying upon fish. They are well adapted for this purpose because their bills, instead of being broad and flattened like other ducks, are long, thin and cylindrical with deep serrated edges. Their serrations act like sharp teeth in holding onto a struggling, slippery fish.

The Red-breasted Mergansers at the Cove were mostly males, and quite easy to identify. The adult male has a dark, bottle-green head with a spiky crest of feathers projecting to the rear. There is a broad white collar on the neck, while the upper chest is reddish-brown, mottled with black. The back is dark with a large white patch running along the sides. Females have brown heads with shorter crests and are generally more grayish.

Because their diet consists almost entirely of fish, the flesh of Mergansers is very rank-tasting. It is also tough. Nevertheless, although not hunted for the pot, they are often shot by fishermen -- who consider them rivals -- and by managers of fish hatcheries, who resent their feeding on the fish hatchlings.

Although the Red-breasted Merganser is likely to be the only member of the group to visit the Cove, both of the other North American merganser species may be seen not far away. The little Hooded Merganser is usually to be found each winter at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and I have many times come upon the larger Common Merganser on the Hudson River near Bear Mountain.

I have been lucky enough to see many Red-breasted Mergansers in several different countries. Yet the sight of a little flotilla of five or six of them swimming serenely along in our own Stuyvesant Cove still gives me a thrill. With their varied coloring and their long straggly crests, they are, perhaps, somewhat bizarre-looking. But I think it goes farther than that; I think they bring a smile to a cold winter's day.

© 2002-2004 Kenneth Chambers, All Rights Reserved
(Kenneth Chambers of Peter Cooper Village was Assistant Chairman of Education at the American Museum of Natural History and worked there for 37 years. As a naturalist associated with the AMNH, he has been a lecturer in Zoology and Polar Exploration and taken numerous trips with groups to the Arctic and Antarctic. He led annual field study tours to the Pribilof Islands from 1976 to 1993.)