Winter is for waterfowl

Water, water, everywhere, and ducks amuck on much of it.

Winter officially departs in just a little over a week (“here’s your hat/what’s your hurry?”), which means that many of the ducks found within the New York City area will shortly be heading north for their breeding grounds. Like Rick in Casablanca, they came here for the waters, but unlike him, they were not misinformed. On ponds and lakes and reservoirs and rivers and bays and the surfy ocean at-large, more than twenty-five species of duck can be found in New York City’s fresh and salt water. With a magnificent harbor and an complexly beautiful estuary, not to mention all the fresh-water bodies, our liquid welcome to ducks can be seen at Prospect Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Gravesend Bay, Jamaica Bay, the Rockaway Peninsula, Coney Island and Coney Island Creek. These are only a very few of the places (I’ve completely left out dose udder boros) where you can see mallard, black, wood, northern pintail, gadwall, American wigeon, Eurasian wigeon, northern shoveler, green-winged teal, Eurasian teal, canvasback, redhead, ring-necked, greater scaup, common eider, long-tailed, white-winged scoter, surf scoter, black scoter, common goldeneye, Barrow’s goldeneye, bufflehead, hooded merganser, common merganser, red-breasted merganser, and ruddy duck. Some of these are regularly seen, in vast numbers, others less so; some, indeed, are quite rare, but all have been seen this winter. (There are some freakin’ gorgeous birds here, kids.) When you add other waterfowl like common loon, red-throated loon, American coot, horned grebe, brant goose, Canada goose, snow goose, and mute swan, plus the various feral domestic ducks/geese (escapees from farms, interbred with wild animals, etc. — ducks have a high incidence of inter-species mixing), the possibilities of urban winter birding are tremendous. Occasionally bone-chilling, sure, but, I’ll hazard to say, world-class, especially considering that you can get there by public transportation.
From the archives. A bit premature, this duckweed-splattered duckling, but this is what all the wanton duckiness leads to….