A carousing flotilla of at least 14 female and juvenile Common Mergansers swarmed into the fast-moving waters at the mouth of Patten Stream on Tuesday. They had a fabulous time chasing each other on top and below the water without catching a single fish. Their long, sharply serrated bills often seemed to be smiling or even laughing in a grotesque, prehistoric way.
There also was plenty of loud, stand-up wing clapping applause by these ducks. (Here you see a Merganser clapping and not standing on anything, it’s treading water:
The reason that virtually all ducks make such displays is not fully known, as far as I can tell. It apparently is not a sexual display. Most researchers seem to theorize that it simply is a way for ducks to stretch and relieve cramped wings; some say that it’s a way to shed beaded water from their backs, and one “scientific” article offered the unlikely finding that the move is to activate the ducks’ preening oil gland (“uropygial gland”) at the base of their tails.
(Images taken at Surry, Maine, on August 17, 2021.)