Bluebill, Broadbill, Blackhead, Scaup: Too many Names, not enough Ducks

False horizon, Scaup form a thin dark line upon the winter sea. Like toys, bobbing high, they let the current carry them, and the wind. Sometimes one bathes. Sometimes another stands like a child in a high chair and stretches, arms flapping. Though they are diving ducks what you will not see them do is dive. Too early in the day, these are only preparations.

Females, except for that milk-lipped moustache at the base of the bill are dark all over. The males from this distance appear black on head and tail and have bodies of ivory. It’s easy to tell the one from the other. What is nearly impossible at more than a few yards is to tell Greater Scaup from Lesser. It matters. Habit and habitat are diverse between the two, and who knew the numbers would fall the way they’ve done? If you want to know the count ask a man who guns.

The Grouper is my source for all things Duck. In season, every chance he can, he’s out there. “Sleet? Never head of that. Storm warning? What kind of a sissy do you think I am?” It’s a Marine Corp thing except the ducks don’t shoot back. Only the weather does that.

Persistence and that thousand yard stare have a cumulative effect. The Grouper is your man if you want to know what is and what is not. Lately, the answer is “Not.”

“How’d you do?”

“I didn’t. Nothing on the weekend. Nothing all week. Shot one Scaup yesterday and saw a flock of forty.”

Greater Scaup was what The Grouper bagged, but he did not know about the flock. “Too far away,” he said. “I only know when I have one in my hands.”

The division into these two subspecies is more than academic. Greater Scaup winter principally on our saltwater coasts, all the way down into Mexico. Lesser Scaup prefer ponds and inland wetlands but this will not help you because they also cleave to the waters just offshore. It is possible to tell them apart by the males, Lesser’s head with a purplish sheen and Greater reflecting green but to see that, the light must be perfect. From shore, I have made that distinction only once. And if you cannot tell Lesser from Greater it is very hard to tell how each one is doing except we already know the larger bird is in rapid decline and in all probability the small is not far behind.

The coastal habitat of our waterfowl used to be the greatest wetlands in the world - the Fens, the Meadowlands, and all the major salt marshes in every cove between - just where we’ve built our great cities back to the days of the Pioneers and like them, water for us whether tidal or stream-fed is a toilet and a rubbish bin. These once-rich wintering and breeding grounds have largely been filled in or poisoned by a toxic brew, cadmium, mercury, nitrates, pesticides and oil spills to name a few. No wonder the numbers are dire, and the numbers do not lie. “We only see 7 or 8 flocks of Scaup a year now,” The Grouper laments. I know what he means. There were thousands…

The weather came up hard, sleet, snow, sheet ice. I-95’s a Demolition Derby, no time to be out and was I ever glad to get off the road. And wouldn’t you know, just as I pull into the driveway it’s The Grouper driving past, heading home with the duck boat in tow. He rolled the window down and told me the reason was not the storm. “Left the key on,” he said, “battery’s dead,” otherwise he’d be out there now, into the terrors all that open ocean has to offer because he knows, the day will come (and he may live to see it) when all there is to do is sit, the Remington idle across your lap remembering, how it used to be, and will not be, under a leaden sky bereft of wings.

March 15th, 2009 in Winter