A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Northern Pintail:Northern Pintail Yuukaq Now that it's spring, there's bound to be open water on or near the tundra somewhere. Chances are that where you find it, you'll hear a mellow flute-like whistle, followed by a kluk or pruk. Stop for a while, and take a gander with your binocs, and I'll bet you see a drake Pintail duck consorting with his mate. They both probably just arrived from points far to the south where they spent the long winter. They are one of the first duck species you'll see in spring on freshwater sloughs, lakes and ponds. It's possible for that reason the Yupik people in the Hooper Bay area gave them the name "yuukaq," which loosely means, "raw material needed to stay alive or be a person." Mallard ducks, which arrive about the same time as Pintails, are named "yuukarpak," which means "big raw material needed to stay alive." "Pak" means big in Yup'ik, and refers to the larger size of the mallard. The Pintail has other Yupik names. In Scammon Bay, some call it "uqulegaq," which means "one having oil or fat," probably relating to the fat on its body in fall, which must make it a tasty morsel indeed. On the Kuskokwim, it is called "uqsuqaq," which may also relate to its body fat content. Along the Yukon, and also in Scammon Bay, they call the Pintail, "uutkaaq," which derives from the Russian, "utka," for duck. The Pintail, whose scientific name is Anas acuta, or "pointed duck," has the longest neck of all the dabblers or puddle ducks. This trait, along with its slender build, and the male's sharp upward-pointed tail, makes it the most streamlined of waterfowl. After takeoff, watch it cleave gracefully through the sky with its long narrow wings, and you'll wish you were a pintail. The male's unique head coloration, I think, also qualifies him as one of the most handsome of northern ducks. Rivaling the Lesser scaup and Mallard duck in numbers, the Pintail comes a close second or third as the most abundant North American duck. It frequents shallow lakes, tundra ponds, sloughs and marshes and, because of its longer neck generally feeds in deeper water than other dabblers. As a dabbler or puddle duck, it doesn't dive completely under the water for its food. It simply tips its head, neck and most of its body vertically into the water, leaving its tail straight up in the air, and picks vegetal materials off the bottom. It will only dive to escape predators, although normally it escapes by springing directly upward from the water like a teal. As with all female dabblers, her call is a quack and can be hard to differentiate from that of other female puddle ducks. Although in spring during nesting season you don't hear much quacking from the female, you do hear a lot of it in fall and winter, especially if you happen to be in the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, California, where more than a million Pintails congregate during the winter months. Some Pintails must think they're ocean birds, however, for every fall there are always a few flocks that cross the Pacific from California 2000 miles to winter in the Hawaiian Islands. In spring, when they return to their nesting grounds in the north, Pintails have already formed pair bonds and almost immediately get down to the serious business of building their nests. These are mostly constructed by the female near ponds and lakes of sticks, leaves, grasses, mosses and her own downy feathers in a simple depression or hollow in the tundra. Between 6-12 yellow-green or cream colored eggs are layed, one per day, usually in June, and incubated by the female for about 3 1/2weeks. It's interesting that she doesn't begin incubating until she lays the last egg in her clutch. In this way, she assures that all of her young will hatch at more or less the same time. She stays on the nest during the first day after they hatch so they become "imprinted on her and will thereafter follow only her wherever she goes. On cue, the fuzzy little ducklings then do follow their mom out of the nest and head for the nearest body of water. As with most ducks, Pintails are single parent households in that only the female cares for the eggs and young. The drake leaves his mate early in her incubation period, when he begins to molt into his so-called eclipse plumage, which looks very much like that of the female and is worn throughout the winter months. Meanwhile, after another 3 weeks or so, the ducklings have grown their flight feathers and begin to try their wings. They're soon taking off with their mother and visiting other ponds and lakes, and putting on the fat that later makes them good raw material for somebody's stew pot or allows them to successfully find their way south to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge and maybe even as far afield as a crater lake in Hawaii.  |
