Some of my most fond memories of birding as a child involve standing along Lake Washington on a frigid day. Out on the water, unnoticed by most who passed by, were rafts of beautiful fowl. They might have appeared to just be floating about, but those cormorants, grebes, coots, and ducks were doing interesting things. They were also beautiful, and much easier to observe (with the help of decent optical equipment) than zipping brown birds in bushes.

Winter may not be a time of year when our minds are trained on the profusion of biodiversity, but if you focused on waterbirds and even just birds that are strictly ducks you will be astonished by the colors and shapes you can find — even in months like January and February. And they aren’t just bobbing feathers, they are active and have very different life histories. This is why some of my earliest memories of birds revolve around those that float on the water.

First off, why do we get this amalgam of feathery floaters? Ultimately it has to do with our being in the temperate world. If you breed in places that are cold and inhospitable in winter, even Seattle in January looks pretty good. The Pacific Northwest hosts annual visitors like Snow Geese that breed on Wrangell Island in Siberia and even some of the Canada Geese that show up near the Hill travel here from the Arctic Circle. We’re not so far, not so hot, and just right for a variety of waterfowl.

So imagine yourself out on a walk about Foster Island or peering out onto Portage Bay. A careful observer would realize that not every bobbing birdy is doing exactly that same thing, nor occupying the same space. Closer to shore you’d notice more Mallards, Gadwall, and Northern Shovelers which are all dabbling ducks, feeding by dunking their bills and upper body into the muck to get at invertebrates and greenery just below the surface. The least migratory and the most outright showy of all these so-called “puddle ducks” are Wood Ducks, the males of which are swathed in metallic sheen. They are a favorite sighting in canoe trips around the arboretum.

Not all ducks dabble though, some dive. The diving ducks we see on the freshwater near the Hill dive with a pronounced leap forward and propel themselves with their feet only. Sea ducks like Scoters use their wings to both break the surface of the water and to move about underwater to some degree. Also take note, “diving duck” isn’t a taxonomic term.

Due to their contrasting black and white plumage, male Buffleheads are probably the easiest to pick out from afar. Scaup, both Lesser and Greater are hard to tell apart, as are Common and Barrow’s Goldeneye — all of them dive mostly for arthropods, but all swallow a fish or two. More strictly piscivorous are Common Mergansers and Hooded Mergansers, which have serrated bills that help them hold onto their slippery prey. All of these divers breed elsewhere, with the exception of the mergansers you might find yourself face to face with them along a river winding out of the Cascades (Common), or in a slow moving slough (Hooded) this summer.

Here’s where it’s challenging to know where to start and end, while also feeling like I am simply writing down a list of birds: Along with the ducks above, we have other floating fowl that are unrelated and just as worthy of our attention. Goofy gray American Coots, which are more closely related to cranes than ducks and upon whom death from above in the form of Bald Eagles is frequent, (a regular eagle tactic is to dive on flocks of coots until they exhaust themselves from diving and are half drowned and easy prey). Coot have wonderfully lobed feet that allow them purchase in uneven, half watery locations while also acting as good paddles.

Pied-billed Grebes never leave our swampy shorelines (it is rare to even see them fly), snagging crustaceans with their stout bills, controlling their buoyancy so well that they can simply sink into the water. Along with them are other grebes like Western, Red-necked, and Horned Grebes, all of which breed elsewhere in Washington but come to the Puget Sound region to convolese.

Double-crested Cormorants seem to be everywhere, drying out their purposefully wet wings in that iconic stance. Cormorants allow their feathers to become saturated so they can dive deeper and longer for the fish they eat, (an old myth was that they didn’t possess an oil gland to waterproof their feathers but the truth, that they have refined their waterproofing application, is far more interesting.) If you were ever a miscreant teen walking beneath cottonwoods lining sections of the ship canal on a dark Friday night, you might have made the unpleasant discovery that Double-crested Cormorants often roost in these trees, and display their displeasure at being disturbed in the form of explosive excretia. It’s just something I’ve heard about.

I think my point is made. There are a ton of birds out on the water. And they are doing interesting, sometimes hilarious things, like when you catch male ducks cavorting for female attention. Even if breeding is months away, many male ducks are ramping up their search for a mate, and can be found chasing each other about, bobbing their heads in unison, spreading their crests, and just generally trying too hard. One of my favorite displays are those of Ruddy Ducks, who pummel their chests so hard with their bills that they build up bubbles beneath them in the water. We can’t judge too much though, love and lust can lead all of us to seriously silly ends and just as often female ducks join in.

What also makes all these waterfowl so incredible are just that they are there, floating about, living their wild lives within reach of us. Grebes, cormorants, ducks, and coots are beautiful and interesting in their own right and get to so easily slip between worlds where we are at our best only visitors. Stare deep into the eye of a Double-crested Cormorant next summer and tell me they are not beautiful and worthy of your admiration (even if they did crap all over you that one night when you were 17).

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