Dan's Feathursday Feature: Greater Scaup

It’s New Years Day in Chicago. You look out your window at the crack of dawn to see your neighbors walking, hand in hand, ear buds inserted, hoods up, heads down. You assume they are on their way to the nearest dispensary. But instead of getting in their car, they cross the street and walk together into the park. Under a group of basswoods across from the baseball diamond, they stop, remove their ear buds, throw back their hoods and look up.

You have just witnessed the time-honored New Years Day ritual of the first bird sighting of the new year. These two dyed-in-the-wool birders are bound and determined that bird number one shall not be a House Sparrow, so they secreted themselves to a place where they are more likely to see something else—maybe a Downy Woodpecker, or a Northern Cardinal. Nothing against the poor, maligned House Sparrow, but come on, “Anything but a House Sparrow!” is what most birders think at the start of each year.

For me, it’s the Canada Goose. In the South Shore park where I bird a lot, you can’t throw a stick without hitting one. This year I did not want my first bird at that park to be a Canada Goose. With ear buds in and blasting Tool’s “Pneuma,” so I would not hear the honking geese, and with eyes to the ground, I walked toward the lake. For the past month or so, there had been a large flock of Greater Scaup in the bay between the shore and the distant breakwater, and I had decided that those stalwart regulars deserved to be this year’s species numero uno.

It was not easy to keep from glancing toward that area in the bay where the Canada Geese always congregate, but I was resolute as I approached the rocky shore. I looked up and could see a small flock of what I assumed were Greater Scaup on the water about 300 yards away. As I raised the binoculars to try to ID them, I startled a bird that had been resting near shore fifty feet from me. It startled me in return, and without thinking, I looked at it as it took off low across the water with wings whistling. It was a Common Goldeneye.

Plan foiled. Well, I wanted the Greater Scaup to be first, but I’d settle for the Common Goldeneye. Anything but a Canada Goose.

As if to make up for missing their number one billing, while I stood there, flock after flock of Greater Scaup came flying in to join that first small group I had seen earlier. Within five minutes there were about 500 birds out on the water, most of them Greater Scaup, with Redheads mixed in.

The Greater Scaup is not a colorful bird, but the soft browns of the female, with her daub of white where the blue bill meets the face, and the sharply contrasting whites and blacks of the male make it a strikingly handsome bird. A flock of fifty to a hundred Greater Scaup flying across grey Lake Michigan on a cold January morning, when you can’t tell where the horizon ends and the sky begins, is an uplifting sight. For a brief second they disappear, as they bank toward you. Then when they bank away, their bright white bellies sparkle, a flash of jewels amid the somber surroundings.

Besides wanting to one-up the Canada Goose, I had another reason for wanting the Greater Scaup to be my first bird of the new year. The Greater Scaup is the only diving duck that is circumpolar, meaning their territory covers the entire northern third of the globe. As I sat watching yet another flock land on Lake Michigan, I imagined a similar scene being enjoyed in Tehran, in Toulouse, in Tokyo. And I imagined the women and men in those places enjoying the spectacle just as I did. It was a good first thought for the New Year.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a bi-weekly contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.