Nesting Season at the Pond
Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”
The Season is the Reason
It’s spring, finally, in the North Country. The birds have returned, and they are pairing off and building nests. If you stop by Coffin Pond, you may see a gander that meanders in search of a goose. Do you like that phrase? Do you recognize it? Of course, it’s from Glen Miller’s classic “Elmer’s Tune”, which reached no.1 on Billboard in 1941:
Why are the stars always winkin' and blinkin' above?
What makes a fellow start thinkin' of fallin' in love?
It's not the season, the reason is plain as the moon.
It's just Elmer's tune.
What makes a lady of eighty go out on the loose?
Why does a gander meander in search of a goose?
What puts the kick in a chicken, the magic in June?
It's just Elmer's tune.
This wonderful song has a tune composed by (and eventually named for) Elmer Albrecht, an arrangement for Big Band by Dick Jurgens, and lyrics by Sammy Gallop (Elmer's Tune - Wikipedia). While Elmer’s tune might well be the reason that love blossoms for “the charmer, the farmer, the cop on the beat,” it certainly doesn’t cause the gander to meander! Despite what he put into the song, I’m sure that Sammy Gallop well understood that the season really is the reason that the goose meanders in search of a goose.
Early Birds at Coffin Pond
Mergansers and Canada Geese can be seen in Coffin Pond in late March, even with fresh snow on the ground, so long as there is some open water. Common mergansers, which are shown in the opening photo, seek lakes and other large bodies of water, because they like to gather in small flocks. Hooded mergansers join them if they can’t find a small pond with ice out,
March 25, 2020, 40 degrees, beautiful. We walked out the snow-covered trail next to Coffin Pond, which was still two thirds iced over. A half dozen hooded mergansers and a single common merganser were in the pond, while a pair of Canada Geese floated across the river, eventually climbing out and huddling on the opposite shore, their necks buried in their feathers.
April 14, 2022. A dozen common mergansers at Coffin Pond.
March 25, 2020. A single common merganser was in Coffin Pond.
Early Birds at Our Pond
Our pond is only little more than a hundred yards long and 30 yards wide, but it has plenty of cattails at each end, woods and meadows along the sides, and a point ending in what we call Rock Island. Ducks and geese often drop by in early spring, and sometimes a pair decides to nest here.
Common Mergansers
Common mergansers visited our pond most years back when the meadows were less overgrown, but we haven’t seen many in the last ten years.
April 18-22, 2003. Cloudy, about 50 degrees, with almost all of the snow gone. There was a lot of activity at the pond: two pairs of beautiful common mergansers, a pair and another male hooded merganser, a pair of mallards and an extra male, plus a magnificent great blue heron.
April 19, 2009. Two pairs of common mergansers are in the pond along with a pair of mallards. Two Canada geese flew over.
March 18, 2009. A pair of common mergansers swimming toward Rock Island.
Common mergansers, like loons, can stay underwater for several minutes, so you have to be both patient and quick if you want to get a photo when one finally pops up:
August 4, 2011. A diving duck was in our pond, submerging for as long as three minutes. I eventually got a close enough to identify it as a common merganser.
Hooded Mergansers
As the fields around the pond became more overgrown, hooded mergansers, which prefer to pair off in small, sheltered ponds, found our pond increasingly attractive. They sometimes arrive while some ice is still on the pond.
April 1-5, 2020. Ice half out on our pond on the 1st. By the 3rd, ice was gone except for the coves – and a pair of hooded mergansers had settled in.
Hooded mergansers first nested in the pond back in 2006. That was a special event, so I provided a detailed description of the way the mother handled her ducklings:
June 1, 2006. Peepers and tree frogs were active when I went out to look at the sunset, hoping to see the ducklings that were on the pond on May 28th. At 7:30 pm, I saw one at the far end of the pond near the reeds. I walked out along the dam, and two common mergansers flew in for a quick visit; they saw me and immediately took off. I then heard what sounded like a weird frog – halfway from a wood frogs quaking to a bull frog’s rumbling – and soon I saw a mother hooded merganser and two ducklings swimming from the far end toward the point. She was calling for the others to join her, and three more swam out of the low alder branches just west of the point.
A few days later, on June 6th, when I headed out to the pond at 12:27, ever-vigilant Mrs. Merganser began quacking from her sentry post at the center of the pond. At 12:32, she swam toward the shore, where she was met by four or five ducklings, and they disappeared into the reeds.
It was nine years later before another pair nested by our pond, but we have had nesting pairs in eight years since 2015. The father leaves the pond after the ducklings are able to leave their nest, but the mother stays with them for another month or two.
June 15, 2023. A merganser and her ducklings shared Rock Island with a couple of turtles.
June 26, 2019. A merganser swims along with her ducklings in our pond.
The ducklings suffer predation, but each year two or three survive and grow strong enough to survive on their own. They typically leave the pond in mid- to late-August, but may return for a few days in September or even in November.
September 6, 2019, 64 degrees, mostly cloudy. The hooded mergansers have returned after an absence (unexcused) of several days.
November 4-7, 2022, 70-72 degrees (!) At least three hooded mergansers, including one pair, were on the dam on both the fourth and the fifth, and there was one in the pond today that flew to other end and hid in the reeds when I approached.
Mallards
Mallards, the most wide-spread duck in the world, naturally have visited our pond from time to time, but they have only nested once, which was during our first spring here in Sugar Hill. They also nested once at Jayne’s Pond, a little nearby pond that is now nearly completely overgrown.
June 8-9, 1998. Nancy saw two mallards, their five ducklings, and one other duck at our end of the pond at 530pm.
May 27, 2000. There were 11 mallard ducklings by Jayne’s Pond.
I have only twice seen mallards in our pond after mid-June. A pair dropped in for a photo-op on August 10, 2018, and a juvenile rested here on October 9th that same year.
October 9, 2018, partly cloudy, 75 degrees, noon. A juvenile mallard cruised slowly into view, heading toward the reeds in the SE corner. It stepped out on Quahog Rock, but just for a minute, and soon slipped in among the reeds near the big birches. Twenty minutes later, when I stood up, it flew down to the other end of the pond. When I came out again at 5pm, it was back on Quahog Rock.
Wood Ducks
Any sighting of a wood duck is worth remembering, but our first Sugar Hill sighting was truly remarkable:
June 19, 2001 88 degrees, humid, somewhat hazy. We happened to see mama wood duck leading 5 ducklings up the front lawn. We watched then walk around the Pearl Lake side of the house, across the backyard, and up the trail by the pond. She marched them along at a steady rate, apparently knowing right where she was leading them [we never saw them again].
While this was the only time that we have ever seen a mother duck leading her ducklings on a long trek from their pond to a new home, that one sighting is enough to confirm that the story from “Make Way for Ducklings” is in fact true to life!
We have seen wood ducks at our pond every couple of years, and we know that they have nested here at least twice. In early May 2018, I chanced to get a photo of a male wood duck walking away from Rock Island, where it had been enjoying the sunshine.
May 2, 2018. Five turtles – four large and one medium - on Rock Island. While I was taking their picture, I noticed a wood duck walking toward them on the Point. Naturally, it walked away and then flew off, but not before I got three good pictures.
Three weeks later, ducklings enjoyed the view from the same spot.
May 28, 2018. A young wood duck stands on Rock Island, perhaps taking its first look across the pond.
Large families of wood ducks were also swimming around the pond in 2008 and 2011.
June 15, 2008, 80 degrees. A wood duck was leading her ten ducklings toward the point (photo). When I came near, the ducks quacked, came right out in front of me, and swam directly to safety under the branches of the big pine. These are presumably the offspring of the ducks that I saw in the pond on April 30th.
Canada Geese
I was probably in the third grade when someone gave me a little, paperback book with pictures and stories of birds commonly seen in New England. I recall loving the gold finches that I saw near the coast and the robins whose nests I found when climbing in the big oak trees, but it was a sticker of a Canada Goose that I stuck to the cover of my treasured bird book. Several decades ago, still enamored of these beauties, I purchased a pair of Canada Goose andirons for our fireplace. You’ll have to forgive me for being so fond of these geese, because back then, they had yet to become the scourge of golf courses and corporate landscapes. For a ten-year old, it was a great day when we had a chance to see once of these huge, handsome, friendly birds.
As long as these geese keep to small flocks, they are still birds to admire. They come early to Coffin Pond, and a few stay there to raise families.
June 26, 2018. Canada Geese at Coffin Pond.
Our pond always attracts a couple of geese each year, much to the dismay of the resident redwing-blackbirds. However, until this year, their visits have been temporary, so we had to go down to Coffin Pond to see the goslings. For some reason, this year is special. We returned from a vacation to find a pair of geese making themselves at home by the pond. The male has been poking around the edges of the pond, seeking a bite to eat now and then, but the female has been sitting in the same spot at the end of the point for the last six days. Strange behavior? Yes, indeed! She is sitting on her eggs in a simple nest on the ground at the base of several small birch trees. Sitting … sitting … and sitting. For as long as it takes. Without food or drink. For three weeks or longer until the goslings are ready to walk the few feet to the pond to enjoy their first swim. So, we’re keeping an eye on her, hoping to see what happens when the goslings pop out from under her wings.
April 21, 2025. Canada Goose on her nest at the Point.
Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.
