By Sally Siko
Nice to add this Long-tailed Duck to my 2024 list. I spotted these beauties while birding in eastern NJ earlier this week.
I’d been trying to get a nice close up look at one for years but hadn’t had much luck until this gorgeous pair floated right up to me while standing on the rock jetty at Barnegat Light SP.
I was able to spend several minutes enjoying the Long-tail’s as they paddled in close to the rocks, bobbing and diving into the waves.
These guys are voracious eaters of mussels, clams, periwinkles, crustaceans and small fish which they glean from the bottom of the water (kinda like the way warblers use sunlight to spot insects in trees).
Unlike most diving ducks which propel themselves exclusively with their large, webbed feet, the Long-tailed uses its wings in a penguin like fashion. This adaptation allows them to move faster and deeper underwater than other ducks. In fact they have been documented diving well past 200 feet when searching for food!
Breeding near ponds and wetlands in the Queen Elizabeth Islands in far northern Canada as well as in northern Greenland, they leave the tundra lands sometime in October to arrive in NJ in early December. Occasionally a few Long-tails show up as far south as North Carolina where they are sometimes spotted in the basin pond at Ft.Fisher or bobbing in the waves of the Atlantic ocean along the Outer Banks.
They’ll stick around until late February so you still got plenty of time to find one before the year is through.
Aren’t they gorgeous?!
By the way, I’ve added more than 80 new birding tour dates to my Best Life Birding trip schedule.
Check out the calendar below and book your next birding adventure with me today!
Photo by Sally Siko of @bestlife_birding captured on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5
