Commedia dell'arte
The harlequin duck was a stand-out choice for the sea ducks because of
its truly splendid plumage. The colours are striking and the pattern distinguished
yet it does not have the gaudy accoutrements of other species. The harlequin
duck gets its name from the bright, chequered Harlequins of Commedia dell’arte (a sort of early,
Italian pantomime). Despite already having a very apt name, it also has a suite
of alternative monikers including painted duck, totem pole duck, squeaker and,
my personal favourite, blue streak, a description perhaps based on tantalising
viewings in the wild.
The sea ducks (Merginae) are a very interesting group of
ducks and perhaps the most diverse in shape and sizes. It includes the
goldeneye, beautiful, large-headed birds with piercing bright eyes; the eiders,
fantastically ornamented ducks, famed for their soft down; scoters, dark sea
ducks which form large ocean rafts in winter; and saw-billed ducks, adept at catching
fish in their serrated bills. The sea ducks are proficient at catching food below
the surface of lagoons and bays and use their large feed to propel them through
the water. This can make them very difficult to keep track of as a birder! As
with the other ducks, sexes are dissimilar with males often sporting bright or
unusual plumage such as the tail feathers of a long-tailed duck or the fleshy
bill of a king eider.
Day 14: Adélie penguin - Pygoscelis adeliae
Monte the penguin
This is a bird worth talking about on so many levels. Adélies are
obviously penguins, one of around 20 species in the penguin order Sphenisciformes.
Penguins are very special within the birds having completely
abandoned flight in favour of water. We have met birds already, such as ducks
and divers, that have moved along the spectrum from air to water. Giving up
flight is necessary for this lifestyle because water is a very different fluid
from air, requiring different shapes and bone densities. Penguins differ from other aquatic species in their use of their flipper-like wings for propulsion. Since the
extinction of the dinosaurs, penguins have specialised in hydrodynamic ‘flight’
through the water in pursuit of fish prey and for this, they cannot take to the
air again.
It may come as a surprise that, of the 19 penguin species, the Adélie is one of only four species that live and breed on the Antarctic
mainland. Most of the other species inhabit the rocky islands of the Southern Ocean
with a few on mainland New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America
and one species as far north as the Galapagos Islands straddling the Equator. Millions
of Adélies cluster into colonies called rookeries around Antarctica in summer to rear clutches
of two eggs into tiny chicks.
The behaviour of Adelies was first documented during Captain
Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. Tentative groups of penguins were
observed to wait on a precipice of ice for the bravest individuals to dive into
the sea. Their reverence for potential enemies lurking in the water (such as
leopard seals) was not matched by their behaviour towards the dogs and men of
the expedition. With no knowledge of the snarling canines they could approach
with no fear, merely inquisition. Often this ended in disaster for the
unwitting penguin! Among the more unusual observations was ‘the frequency of
sexual activity, auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of
young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion,
sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour.’ This can be ascribed in part to the resemblance of prostrate penguins to enticing females and in part to the lack of knowledge and experience in young males.
This behaviour should be blocked out when watching Monty the
penguin waddle at the heels of his doting owner and friend in the John Lewis
advert. This advert won the hearts of millions and it certainly came as a surprise
to me to see one of my favourite bird species baring my name (near enough
anyway). Monty the penguin should be enjoyed as a paragon of love and Christmas
spirit and not as a sexually depraved animal attempting to subvert the morals
of the British public.
Day 15: Great northern diver - Gavia immer
The bird that created the world
The great northern diver marks a foray into one of the
smaller orders, the Gaviiformes. There are only five gaviiform species, all in
the genus Gavia and all can be seen
in Britain. The great northern, black-throated (Gavia arctica) and red-throated (Gavia
stellata) divers spend their winters around the shores of Britain at which
time they are grey and dour. In the spring and summer they adopt their striking
breeding plumage with the latter two species beginning courtship in lochs and
coves in Scotland and the former returning to Iceland and North America. The
Pacific (Gavia pacifica) and yellow-billed
diver (Gavia adamsii) are only
vagrants to the area.
Divers present interesting etymology on three fronts.
Firstly, Gavia is actually the Latin
for a smew (Mergellus albellus), a
small, black-and-white saw-billed duck. This is odd given that the two share less
than a passing resemblance with the divers far exceeding the smew in size
(among other differences). Secondly, and perhaps less interestingly, the European
name diver comes from the very obvious feeding ecology of diving to catch fish.
Measuring them, I was impressed at how powerful and blade-like the bill of a
great northern diver was. Like the diving ducks, they use their feed to propel
them through the water yet their adaptation to this pursuit has greatly
diminished their walking ability which brings me to my third point.
In North
America, divers are known as loons which, I thought, was because their eerie
cries sound like people short of a few marbles. In actual fact their name
derives from either the Old English lumme,
which means lummox, or the Scandinavian lum
which means clumsy, both of which pertain to their inept walking. I think this
is unfair because a diver gliding across the water in breeding plumage is an
elegant and beautiful thing.
The wailing call I mentioned has inspired many tales in
Native American folklore. According to tribes in British Columbia, rain was predicted
from an excess of calls whilst in the Micmac saga a loon named Kwee-moo is a messenger
akin to Hermes for the tribal hero Glooscap. For the Ojibwe, a loon actually created
the world.
In terms of classification, divers have been difficult to place. For a long time they were thought the most primitive extant birds because of their resemblance to the extinct Hesperornithiformes, an unrelated group which dived for food in a similar manner. Now their placement is anyone’s guess but most favour probably lies with a sistership with penguins, hence their placement on this list.
Day 16: Buller's albatross - Thalassarche bulleri
Foolish gull or ocean chief?
Albatrosses form the family Diomedeidae, the largest of the tubenoses
(Procellariiformes), an order so called for their unusual tubular nostrils
which they use to smell prey amid the ocean spray. In addition they have enlarged
nasal glands used to excrete the excess salt from their diet of fish and
seawater. Tubenoses all have similar ecologies differing mainly in their size.
They are all true ocean wanderers, usually only returning to land to breed on
remote islands. Isolation is needed to protect them from predators as their
aerial ability has meant the impairment of walking on land.
Most tubenoses practise natal philopatry, returning to breed
at the colonies of their birth. This has probably lead to their genetic
isolation from each other despite the fact that they overlap so much when at
sea. Whilst foraging, tubenoses can cover vast areas in search of food but they
are able to expend little energy doing so, using their supremely aerodynamic
wings to fly over the water. Dynamic and slope soaring are techniques which
utalise energy from the wind and waves allowing albatrosses to fly up to 1000km
a day without flapping their wings!
The Buller’s albatross is a member of the genus Thalassarche, the most numerous of the
albatross genera. I could have chosen one of many species within the genus for
they are beautiful and noble looking birds with bright, powerful bills and dark
frowns. The Thalassarche are commonly
called mollymawks, a name deriving from the Dutch Mallemugge which means foolish gull. By contrast Thalassarch means ocean chief. I know
which name I prefer. 
