At first, I didn’t notice these three common merganser youngsters sunning themselves as my unaided eyes scanned the pools at the mouth of Patten Stream earlier in the week. But, fortunately, one of them looked down quickly at a swirling fish, and my eyes focused on the spot.
Young common mergansers such as these are extraordinarily independent beings. Within a day or so of their hatching, they’ll jump out of their tree cavity nest, tumble to the ground, follow their mother to water, and immediately start catching their own aquatic insect food without instruction. Before they’re two weeks old, they’ve usually graduated to diving for fish.
These birds sometimes are called sawbills because of their long, serrated mandibles that enable them to hold and manipulate wiggling, slippery fish. On the other hand, the name “merganser” is derived from the Latin and is loosely translated as “plunging goose,” which isn’t a bad description either. (Images taken in Surry, Maine, on July 19, 2022.)