A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Mallard Duck:Mallard Duck Ukulkatagpak Have you ever wondered where domestic ducks originated? Well, the Mallard is the answer. This common duck is the ancestor of all breeds of domestic ducks except the Muscovy. It is probably the best known and most abundant wild duck in the northern hemisphere, including Alaska. It is also one of the few duck species that will remain here all winter if it has a dependable source of open water and food. If you ever visited the Chena River near Pioneer Park in Fairbanks during the midwinter months, you've seen these ducks. The same in Anchorage at Westchester Lagoon. When I lived on the Lower Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta I never saw them winter over, but I imagine somewhere somebody has observed them there. The Mallard is one hardy bird. For hunters everywhere, they are also a very tasty bird. That's why they have the Yupik name they do. Ukulkatagpak, the Yukon name for Mallard, means something like "really fatty big duck." It has many other names from other areas in the Lower Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that relate to both its fatness and its usefulness to humans. In Hooper Bay they call the duck Yuukaq and Yuukarpak, and in Norton Sound they use these terms plus lyukarpak and Uqsurtaq. Kuskokwim villages use the terms Uqsuqaq and Uqsuqerpak. Undoubtedly there are others I haven't mentioned. All of which goes to show how universal and well known the duck is in southwest Alaska. While we're on names, the scientific name for the Mallard is Anas platyrhynchos, meaning flat-nosed duck. The common name Mallard comes from the Old French word, maslard, relating to "maleness." Masle means "male." With its glossy green head and chestnut breast, the male Mallard is notably different from other male duck species. Although the female is a plain brown color, her loud quack, quack-quack, quack, quack-quack while swimming makes her unmistakable from other species. Mallards are dabbling ducks, which means they feed in shallow ponds and rivers by reaching below the surface and grabbing vegetation off the bottom with their bills. You've probably seen them tipping up their tails to further extend their range. When necessary, they can also dive for food in deeper water. In addition to bottom plants, they will eat snails, crustaceans, aquatic insects, tadpoles, small fish and fish eggs. They also forage on grass and grain seed, and some of you may even have seen them scavenging on dead salmon. Something you've probably noticed about Mallards is that when they take off they fly up vertically from the water or land. This is a trait other dabbling ducks like pintails and teal have. They also favor fresh water at all seasons. Rarely will you see them on salt water. Males and females do their courting and form pair bonds during fall and winter, so they are already paired by the time they reach their nesting grounds in spring. Courting displays by the male include dipping his bill in the water and then rearing up, whistling and grunting as he settles back on the water; raising his head and tail while giving sharp calls; and plunging the front of his body deep in the water and then flinging up water with his bill. All very dramatic. Once on the breeding ground, the male accompanies the female as she seeks and chooses a site for her nest. The site may be more than a mile from fresh water, but is usually closer to water and on the ground among concealing vegetation. The nest is a shallow bowl of leaves and grasses, lined with down plucked by the female from her own body. The female lays 7-15 whitish to olive buff-colored eggs and incubates them by herself for almost a month. A week or so after all the eggs have been laid and incubation begins in earnest the male leaves the nesting territory and joins other male flocks. Since Mallards are only seasonally monogamous, this is the last the male and female will see of each other. They will find new mates in the coming year. Within a day after hatching, the downy young leave the nest and are led to the nearest water by their mother. Although they are tended by her, she does not feed them. They are already programmed to feed themselves. As they grow older and bigger they become more independent, until finally two months after hatching they take their first clumsy flight. They are now completely on their own. Since Mallards are bottom feeders, they sometimes pick up spent lead shot. Even one of these shot will poison them and probably end up killing them. In any case, they are still one of the most abundant duck species in the world. There is a long list of other duck species with which the Mallard has crossbred and produced hybrids, including pintails and captive domestic ducks. When you find an odd-looking specimen that doesn't quite fit the pattern you're used to, go to your bird book and check it out for its mixed parentage. Then report it to the Audubon Society in Bethel or Anchorage.  |
Marbled Murrelet:Weather Bird Marbled Murrelet Ciguraq Back in the early 1980’s when my wife Jennifer and I taught in Scammon Bay I came to know an elder named Dan Akerelrea. He was a wonderful man and taught me so much about the Yupik way of life and about the birds the people depended upon for their livelihood. One of these birds was the Marbled murrelet, which he called Ciguraq. Kenn Kaufman in his book, Lives of North American Birds, referred to this murrelet as a “strange, mysterious little seabird.” If only Mr. Kaufman knew how strange and mysterious this seabird really was. For Dan told me it had been a favorite of the shamen on the Bering Sea coast for predicting the weather – akin to a crystal ball. Shortly after telling me this he began to sing the murrelet song, which he said had been sung by shamen to get an accurate weather prediction. I sat there spellbound as he chanted the whole song, finally coming to the end and chuckling to himself, “shaman song!” I wished I had taped him because it was probably the first time he had sung it in many years, since there was such a stigma attached to the shaman after the coming of the missionaries. I wonder to this day if anyone still knows that song. Ciguraq is a small chunky member of the auk family, and in its core range along the S.E. coast of Alaska nests high in the branches of giant old growth fir and spruce trees. In S.W. Alaska, however, where there are no tall trees on the coast, they nest in mossy depressions on the ground or in rock cavities on the sides of mountains. They do not breed until they are at least two years old, but not much is known about their courting behavior. They nest from mid-April until July or August in their northern range and lay only one very beautiful egg variably colored from olive-yellow to blue-green marked with brown, black and lavender. The egg is incubated by both adults for about 30 days. After the egg hatches both parents fly from their ocean feeding areas to their nest sites on land (sometimes up to 15 miles inland in their southern range) at dusk and dawn with their catch of small fish such as capelin, herring and sand lance. After about 40 days of this non-stop feeding, the fledgling finally lurches into the air and flies alone to the sea where it will have to fend for itself. Conditions are harsh out there and for this reason the mortality rate of juveniles is high. Marbled murrelets have seriously declined in their numbers in their southern Alaskan range, since logging operations have destroyed most of their old growth forest nesting habitat. This unfortunate situation has made it a flagship species in the movement to preserve the old growth fir and spruce areas of S.E. Alaska. Its habit of feeding near shore in relatively shallow water made it especially vulnerable to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. I became aware of the decline of this curious little auk a few years ago while helping out in a murrelet survey in S.E. Alaska. I remember how close we could get to the birds as they foraged in pairs or small groups of pairs, and how they would take off so suddenly, often with a little silver fish hanging from both sides of their mouths, and make a beeline for shore. They flew with extremely rapid wingbeats, and someone told me that they fly underwater the same way with 2-3 wingbeats per second. The origin of the Yupik name Ciguraq may have something to do with the shape of the ornamental bead that Yupik hunters traditionally used to dangle from their nose on a short piece of sinew. Its scientific name, Brachyramphus marmoratus, is Greek and Latin for “very short-billed seabird with marbled plumage.” If you’re out on the ocean and you see one of these birds, remember the old story about the shaman’s crystal ball.  |
Merlin:Merlin Qiirayuli  This hawk may not look as sexy as its cousins the Peregrine falcon and Gyrfalcon, and it certainly isn't the speeding bullet they are. You also won't see it except during the summer in the taiga forest of the YK Delta. But it is a fascinating bird in its own right. It takes the scientific name Falco columbarius because it has hook-shaped (falcate) claws, and because in Europe where it was given this name its prey included pigeons (columbarius). This is why seven of its common English monikers include pigeon hawk as part of the name. There is no question why it's not called pigeon hawk in the YK Delta. There are no pigeons there, unless someone has recently imported a few into Bethel. In the Delta this falcon takes the same name as the Peregrine falcon, Qiirayuli, because of the sound it makes, qi qi qi qi qee, when it rushes to meet an intruder. Its new common English name Merlin comes straight out of Arthurian legends from the Middle Ages of jolly old England. Remember Merlin the magician and prophet who advised Arthur from his home in the woods? Whoever named this bird Merlin was right on. For starters, it likes open woodland like the taiga of the YK Delta, and what's more I believe some of its behavior is truly magical. Watch it fly low over the ground toward a dead tree or stump, suddenly spread its tail and wings, then bound straight up to perch and light on top. Watch it as it hunts low over the ground, then when it spots a smaller bird, veers, picks up speed, swiftly overtakes it and plucks it out of midair with its talons. It will do the same with dragonflies, which it eats on the wing. Although the male falcon returns to the nesting ground before the female, usually the same pair comes back to the same general area to breed each year. And though they are already bonded from previous years, they still go through the same courtship mating dance. In this, the male verges on being magical when he performs his spectacular flight displays, with steep dives, slipping glides, powerful twists and tight rolls from side to side, finally fluttering with shallow wingbeats like a moth at night. During this performance the female watches him as she wings lazily round and round in the thin air or perches on a nearby dead tree or rock outcrop. Quite often these aerial acrobatics end up with the male lighting beside his mate and feeding her some tasty morsel he just caught. She never refuses. All this sounds familiar, doesn't it? -a little like some of our own human antics. Mating and nesting occur very soon after the acrobatics since the pair simply take over an abandoned nest of a raven, hawk or owl in a tree, on a cliff ledge or even on the ground. Sometimes the female relines the nest with twigs and feathers before she lays her eggs, but Merlins mostly focus on the pragmatic rather than the pretty. After laying 4-5 reddish brown spotted eggs, the female is helped by the male during the month long incubation period. After bringing his mate the food, he incubates the eggs while she eats. Even after the eggs hatch the female remains with the young, brooding them when they are small while her mate hunts for the whole family. When he flies in with the food, the female takes it from him near the nest and feeds it to the young. Only when the nestlings are older will their mother leave them and help hunt for their food. Because females are bigger than males they usually bring back more to eat for the young. A final unique quality of the Merlin is that yearling birds, especially males, occasionally help their parents the following year defend their nesting territory, and sometimes even help feed their mothers while they are incubating eggs on the nest. Now, that's magic, don't you think? |
Mew Gull:Mew Gull Arliaq Have you ever thought you heard a kitten mewing and the sound came from above you? And when you glanced up it wasn't a kitten at all, but a small white and gray gull flying around in lazy circles. Then you looked it up in your bird guide, and you found it was called a Mew gull. Well, the Mew gull is one of the few birds whose English name imitates its call (remember "onomatopoeia"?). There are a handful of others, like the chickadee, killdeer and whimbrel, but you'll be hard pressed to find many more. This isn't true of Yupik bird names, though. Probably half of those I've written about so far are imitative of their calls. But the Y-K Delta Yupik name for the Mew gull, "Arliaq," is another story. According to the Yupik Eskimo Dictionary, its origin is from the Aleut, "agligax," their name for the same bird. It's a mystery to me how that happened, and if anyone has an idea, let me know. Bristol Bay Yupik people have another name for the bird, Egiaq. And then there is the generic name for gull, Naruyaq, which many Yupiks use to describe the Mew gull, probably because it's such a friendly gull, willing to share your food right from your hand (which is the meaning of "naruyaq"). And we cant forget the scientific name, Larus canus, from the Latin meaning "hoary-white seabird." Not a very imaginative name, but such are scientific names. I simply call this friendly little gull "mewy." Mewies have some fascinating behavior, by the way, among which is their courtship display. The female assumes a hunched posture and slowly approaches the male, flagging her head as she moves forward. When she is directly in front of her mate she begs for food by pecking on his bill. He then regurgitates food for her. Mating follows. This display is repeated during the period of egg laying. Speaking of eggs, Arliaq lays three buff-brown or olive-brown eggs in a grass-lined scrape on a river bar, or in a shallow cup on a platform of twigs, seaweed, grass and moss in the top of a low-growing spruce next to a lake. But you might find a mewy's nest anywhere, as long as there is water nearby. And there may or may not be a colony of them nesting fairly close together. The incubation period for the eggs is about 25 days. During this period the male is especially protective of his brooding mate. You do not want to even get close to the nest. If you do, heaven help the crown of your head. And after the eggs hatch, it's double trouble for any human approaching the nest or chicks. Both adults will be on you lickety split, and if you werent bald before they attacked, you certainly will be after they finish with you. As with other species of gulls, the chicks are semiprecocial. That is, they are born with their eyes open, are covered with downy feathers and are able to walk. But unlike fully precocial chicks, they remain in or near the nest for the first two or three weeks after hatching. Adults feed their hatchlings by regurgitating food, especially fish, then holding it in the tip of their bill for the chick to peck at. They may also regurgitate the food completely in the nest or on the ground in front of the young birds. Feeding of the chicks is done through the fledging period, which usually takes place about a month after hatching. Slowly but surely the quickly growing fledglings then learn to feed themselves, and they become omnivores like their parents, eating everything from insects and earthworms to fish, mollusks, crustaceans, young birds, mice, and grains. They also learn some interesting feeding strategies from their parents, like dropping sea urchins from the air onto rocks or other hard surfaces to crack them open. They become useful scavengers around harbors and beaches, cleaning up dead fish, crabs, and other sea animals cast up after a tide or storm. I've seen them doing this clean-up work on the Hooper Bay beach after tides and storms there. Another interesting feeding behavior mewies learn over time is to drink salt water. Like all gulls, they can do this by eliminating excess salt through a pair of glands located on top of the skull above the eyes. When juvenile gulls fledge they do not resemble their parents. They instead have a distinctive streaked brown plumage which continues to change until the third year when their feather color becomes like that of their parents and is finally worthy of the scientific name, canus, which means "hoary-white." They are then fully mature birds who can have families of their own and peck the pates of humans bold enough to approach their nests. Be careful!  |
