IT WAS DAYLIGHT on the river and no birds sang. It was quiet, like The Duke used to say, “A little too quiet.”
I figured the birds were up to something. Normally I’d be cussing the fish ducks about this time of year. Flights of River Mergansers used to head upstream from the sea in the spring to intercept the yearly downstream migration of smolts to the ocean. It was a wonder of nature thing to be floating down a river and watch a flock of mergansers veer apart to miss the boat, then fly by about head high, grunting like pigs the whole time. They were pigs, saw-billed fish-eating riverine vacuum cleaners that spent their free time engaged in bizarre mating rituals. I liked to watch.
You could mistake a male merganser with his green head and large white belly for a drake mallard. They are about the same size. Instead of a duck bill, the merganser has a hooked, pointed and serrated beak they use to catch fish. Their feet are located toward the rear of the bird for maximum underwater propulsion. Even the white belly is a form of camouflage that makes the bird difficult for the fish to see from below. In comparison, a female merganser looks like something the cat drug in. She’s a boring brown, black and grey with a pathetic little red crest on top. She’s built to blend in. She’ll make her nest in hollow trees, avoiding the river banks infested with myriad predators while the male heads north with his pals to take care of his feathers.
If the eggs hatch before being eaten, the downy chicks emerge into a river at the height of the spring flood. This is a well-disciplined brood that sometimes rides down the rapids on their mother’s back. The chicks grow up fast on a diet of regurgitated fish. I once saw a mother merganser with 21 chicks. Can you imagine what her day was like?
The only thing worse than the mergansers was the great blue heron. They used to wade in the shallows catching fish from the size of minnows to 4-pound trout. They built nests the size of a truck bed up in the trees near water. Watching the heron fish was a disturbing spectacle for a fisherman. If the fish is a small one, the heron will eat it whole. They get it pointed head-first down their gullet and just keep swallowing. Larger fish are cut up by the scissor bills of the herons and disappear in seconds.
I have often watched them wading along the edge of a pool in the river where the mergansers are fishing. The fact that there are so few herons on the rivers these days is a sobering thought with disturbing implications.
Even the Belted Kingfisher is becoming scarce these days. These obnoxious little birds have a call that sounds like someone shaking a can of rocks. With a beak too big for its head and a head too big for its body, the kingfisher flies in a manner totally against the laws of science. The kingfisher hovers above the water, dives down to catch the fish then shoots back out of the water like a little feathered missile.
We used to blame these fish eaters for being predators, but they were an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. Like the canary in the coal mine. If the bird dies, do you blame the canary? Or find out what killed them because we’re next. All I know is, I don’t cuss fish ducks anymore.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
