Tag Archives: seabird

Quinnie the Harlequin Catches a Crab!

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Dear Friends,

I had to take the week off from posting wildlife stories as I am in the home stretch of getting our Piping Plover documentary back to the film finishing editing studio. The film is coming along beautifully and we are already getting requests from communities to schedule soft screenings (unofficial screenings). One of the primary goals of the film is to help beachgoers better understand why we want to protect these valiant little shorebirds that are nesting in our midst and I think/hope/pray it will be successful in that regard <3. I can’t wait to share it with you all!

Although I haven’t been posting, I am still filming on early morning walks and am getting a backlog of wonderful wildlife scenes to share. There just are not enough hours in the day!!

With thanks and deepest appreciation to everyone who has so generously contributed to our film. If you would like to make a contribution, please go here to our tax deductible online fundraiser. All contributions go to the film finishing studio and to applying to film festivals.

With gratitude to the following PiPl friends for their kind contributions – Lauren Mercadante (New Hampshire), Jennie Meyer (Gloucester), Alice and David Gardner (Beverly), JoeAnn Hart (Gloucester), Kim Tieger (Manchester), Joanne Hurd (Gloucester), Holly Niperus (Phoenix), Bill Girolamo (Melrose), Claudia Bermudez (Gloucester), Paula and Alexa Niziak (Rockport), Todd Pover (Springfield), Cynthia Dunn (Gloucester), Nancy Mattern (Albuquerque), Marion Frost (Ipswich), Cecile Christianson (Peabody), Sally Jackson (Gloucester), Donna Poirier Connerty (Gloucester), Mary Rhinelander (Gloucester), Jane Hazzard (Georgetown), Duncan Holloman (Gloucester), Karen Blandino (Rockport), Duncan Todd (Lexington), Sue Winslow (Gloucester), Amy Hauck-Kalti (Ohio), JoAnn Souza (Newburyport), Karen Thompson (San Francisco), Carolyn Mostello (Rhode Island), Susan Pollack (Gloucester), and my sweet husband Tom 🙂

If you do not see your name listed above, please, please let me know. I absolutely do not want to leave anyone off. My computer crashed again and am working like crazy to recover all the data lost. Thank you!

Stay safe in the pending storm, and have lots of fun, too!

Warmest wishes,

xoKim

The handsome drake Harlequin we nicknamed Quinnie is finding a veritable feast while staying the winter on the shores of Cape Ann. He dives into the fast moving incoming tide, surfaces with a crab, then heads to a nearby rock to floof and digest his lunch.

HARLEQUIN DUCK QUINNIE UNDERSEA!

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Elated to film Quinnie undersea! It was pure happenstance. The late day sun angled through the water, making for fantastic visibility. His highly contrasting feather patterning I think helped also to better capture her underwater. The long version is posted here and the shorter clip on Instagram and Facebook.

Notice how he moves rocks aside while foraging for prey. I think he was capturing baby fish, but I can’t really tell, even when the prey is splashing above the water. The biologists at the Seacoast Science Center in New Hampshire thought perhaps the fish may be baby flounder, but they only thought that from my description, not from seeing the clips.

It’s truly heartbreaking to learn that East Coast Harlequin numbers have declined from perhaps 10,000 birds in the 1800s to fewer than 1,000 currently. “This population is doing terribly and may be headed for oblivion,” says Jim Reichel, a zoologist with the Montana Natural Heritage Program. Before its prohibition in 1989, sport hunting was most likely the main mortality factor for eastern Harlequins. Now, oil spills and dams are the primary problems.

 

Quinnie the Harlequin, the Most Beautiful of Ducks!

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In mid-December, my friend Jill sent a snapshot of a Harlequin Duck that was foraging inshore. He was easy to re-find and surprisingly, this beautiful male seaduck has not left the area. It seems unusual for a Harlequin Duck to remain so close to shore. During the winter months, I mostly see them congregating further from people, forming mini tribes on rocky outcroppings in Rockport.

Charlotte suggested the nickname Quinnie. We have been keeping a close eye on him over the past month as I think he is recovering from a foot injury. He favors his left foot and does not put much weight on the right. And in all these weeks of filming, I have never seen him fly!

Harlequin Ducks often suffer injury as they breed in roaring whitewater mountain streams and forage on the roughest rocky shores. I was supremely worried about Quinnie during the recent spate of wild wind storms and extreme tides. Despite his foot injury, our little Quinnie is managing. He loves deep diving, as the tide is coming in and the waves are roughly splashing against the jutting rocks, but he also does quite well foraging on days when the water is crystal clear and as smooth as glass.

Bright days are best for observing the magnificently beautiful feather patterning of the drake Harlequin

Drake Harlequins have to be one of the, if not the, most strikingly beautiful ducks to grace our shores. Rich rusty red, graphite gray, and brilliant blues, accented with slashes of white make a sharp contrast to the plain subdued brown and gray of the hen. Only weighing about a pound and a half, Harlequins are about half the size of Mallards.

Harlequin ducks are monogamous. Initially,  I thought we had a pair of Harlequins, but what I mistook for a female Harlequin was actually a female Long-tailed Duck. The two hung out together for about a week before she departed.

Quinnie appears to be all alone but unfazed by his predicament. He forages with great gusto and holds his own, even against the gulls who occasionally dive bomb him for what appears to be no other reason than “rock envy.”  The gulls also displace each other over choice rocks so I don’t think (or hope), it’s not personal towards Quinnie.

 

NORTHERN GANNET MYSTERIOUS DIESEASE STRIKES AGAIN

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Reposting this from 2017 as another Northern Gannet is struggling  on the Backshore.

A second Northern Gannet, in little over a week, has come ashore to die on a Cape Ann Beach. A friend messaged from the Backshore that the Gannet was resting on the rocks and was not walking well.

Heartbreaking to see, the usually majestic Northern Gannet is struggling to survive.

This beautiful Northern Gannet appears to have the same neurological symptoms of the mysterious disease that has caused over one hundred Gannets to wash ashore on Cape Cod beaches. Veterinarians are sending samples of the dead and dying birds to the USDA to see if federal experts can find the cause. A harmful algae bloom (often referred to as Red Tide) is suspect.

The Gannet tried and tried to take flight, but to no avail, wobbling instead and repeatedly tipping over.

The first dying Northern Gannet seen on a Cape Ann beach was shared by Ann Rittenburg. On July 12th, she discovered the bird struggling at Good Harbor Beach. Dianne Corliss, Gloucester’s Animal Control Officer, rescued the seabird. Dianne tried to help, but the Gannet was eventually put to sleep. She warns that the bills of Northern Gannets are extremely powerful. If you come across a Gannet on the beach, do not go near it as they are known to go for the eyes and necks of people. 

What makes the deaths even more troubling is that Northern Gannets are winter migrants through our area, and most months are spent at sea. During the summer season they are typically at their North American breeding grounds, which are six well-established colonies, three in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, and three in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland.

My husband Tom and I saw  these magnificent seabirds from the shores of Provincetown last spring. They were feeding along with the Right Whales. The Northern Gannets soared high above the whales and then plunged straight down with a powerful ferocity. It was dramatic and gorgeous to see. I hope the same illness or Red Tide that is killing the Gannets will not affect whales.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW3c29Bl9sl/

NORTHERN GANNET MYSTERIOUS DIESEASE STRIKES AGAIN

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A second Northern Gannet, in little over a week, has come ashore to die on a Cape Ann Beach. Jim Dowd messaged from the Backshore that the Gannet was resting on the rocks and was not walking well.

Heartbreaking to see, the usually majestic Northern Gannet is struggling to survive.

This beautiful Northern Gannet appears to have the same neurological symptoms of the mysterious disease that has caused over one hundred Gannets to wash ashore on Cape Cod beaches. Veterinarians are sending samples of the dead and dying birds to the USDA to see if federal experts can find the cause. A harmful algae bloom (often referred to as Red Tide) is suspect.

The Gannet tried and tried to take flight, but to no avail, wobbling instead and repeatedly tipping over.

The first dying Northern Gannet seen on a Cape Ann beach was shared by Ann Rittenburg. On July 12th, she discovered the bird struggling at Good Harbor Beach. Dianne Corliss, Gloucester’s Animal Control Officer, rescued the seabird. Dianne tried to help, but the Gannet was eventually put to sleep. She warns that the bills of Northern Gannets are extremely powerful. If you come across a Gannet on the beach, do not go near it as they are known to go for the eyes and necks of people. 

What makes the deaths even more troubling is that Northern Gannets are winter migrants through our area, and most months are spent at sea. During the summer season they are typically at their North American breeding grounds, which are six well-established colonies, three in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, and three in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland.

My husband Tom and I saw  these magnificent seabirds from the shores of Provincetown last spring. They were feeding along with the Right Whales. The Northern Gannets soared high above the whales and then plunged straight down with a powerful ferocity. It was dramatic and gorgeous to see. I hope the same illness or Red Tide that is killing the Gannets will not affect whales.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW3c29Bl9sl/