by Rick Marsi
The question is this: If you were a duck, and you knew some ducks spend the winter in bayou country and others in upstate New York, which of the two spots would you choose? Obviously, the bayou is warmer; just look at the crawdads down there. Even in mid-winter, they’re scuttling through delta backwaters, avoiding Cajuns and cocktail sauce. By contrast, crayfish in upstate New York don’t even know it’s January in January. They’re stiff as boards, hibernating deep in pond mud or under streamside rocks.
But do ducks care that much about cold? They don’t. A dense layer of down covered by abundant outer feathers shields duck bodies from the coldest water. What about locale, then? Do different duck species prefer one wintering area over another? They do, but it’s not a conscious choice. When it comes to choosing migration routes and wintering areas, duck minds are programmed. If you’re a wood duck from the Adirondacks, and your parents have traditionally wintered in southern Arkansas, that’s where you’ll go. Some may call you faint-hearted for not wintering farther north, but you have no choice. You’re programmed. by Rick Marsi
It’s the same with ducks that stay north all winter. If you’re a bufflehead that has hatched in Alberta, and you end up wintering in upstate New York, the decision to do so was not in your hands. Some buffleheads from Alberta winter as far south as the Gulf Coast of Texas; others as far north as the Gulf of Maine.
You ended up somewhere in between—on huge Cayuga Lake, which looks like the sea. This is where your forebears came in winter. This is where your offspring will come. You’re a slave to genetics, a small feathered body hurtling south, east or west on instinctive command.
Of course, you can’t be sure what you’ll find when you end up where your parents have always gone. Marshes, especially, have a way of disappearing from one year to the next. Over the past half-century, millions of wetland acres have been drained so people can shop or live by a golf course. Larger bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes and oceans, tend to stay where they are but can suffer from pollution. When fouled water results, fish, invertebrates and other food items perish.
That’s where the genetic code gets thrown out the window. If a wood duck should arrive at the southern wetland where its predecessors have wintered for centuries and find no food, or a parking lot, that bird will fly elsewhere. Conversely, if common goldeneyes arrive on the frigid Niagara River, and find food where it always has been, they will happily endure the cold to dive for minnows and snails.
If you’re watching them do this, and you’ve been watching them every year since who-knows-when, you’re responsibility is to protect their winter home. Make sure the water stays clean. Make sure the food chain remains intact. Make sure wetland laws are in place to prevent destruction of habitat.
If you hold up your end of the bargain—to preserve their winter world as you would your own—the ducks will return every winter. With luck, someone else will be worrying just as hard about preserving their nesting grounds in Alberta or the Adirondacks. That’s where the ducks will be heading soon, with spring a few south winds away.
Naturalist Rick Marsi, a member of the Susquehanna Group, is a journalist, public speaker and leader of eco-tours. His book of favorite nature columns is Wheel of Seasons, available at www.rickmarsi.com. ©2012 Rick Marsi