By Sally Siko

Of of the most striking looking ducks we’ve got swimming around the Carolinas is the Hooded Merganser. With that huge crown of feathers at the top of their heads, these handsome birds are truly kings of the water.
I spotted this small flock yesterday while birding at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, SC.
My guests and I were able to get relatively close to these guys from our vantage point next to the marsh which allowed some excellent photo opportunities.
The drakes were putting on a territorial display, cruising through the water upright with chests puffed out and bills pointed up to the sky in an effort to prove who’s the biggest badass in the marsh.
You can even hear them making their weird honking grunt-quacking noises while they were trying to impress the hens!

Hooded Mergansers are a species of diving duck with a somewhat unusual diet in that they do not eat much plant material. Instead they prefer to snack on small fish, crawfish, and aquatic insects.In addition, they’ve got long serrated beaks which aid in the capture and consumption of their underwater prey.
The tidal marsh habitat where I photographed these birds serve as the perfect hunting grounds for the Mergansers.

Though many of us associate Mergansers as being a wintertime visitor to the Carolinas, they are known to breed in our eastern counties making them a year round resident of the Carolina’s.
Like Wood Ducks, they are cavity-nesters but unlike Wood Ducks, Mergansers often lay their eggs in other females’ nests. This is behavior is similar to the practice of Brown-headed Cowbirds, except that the ducks only lay eggs in nests of their own species.
Pretty neat, huh?

By the way, I’ve added 80 new birding tour dates to my schedule so if you’d like to join me out there in SC to see these beautiful ducks for yourself check the calendar below for details & booking info!

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5