Mergansers

One evening I saw something shimmering, down in the cove, and I went down to see who was there. It was a flock of ducks, very busy, paddling around by the little point near us. There were sixteen of them, I think, though it was hard to count, they moved so quickly. They were long and slim, with slightly reddish heads and long flat beaks. There was some blurry white around the neck, and a white patch on the back near the tail. They all seemed to be about the same color - reddish brown heads and greyish-brown backs. They kept moving, paddling fast, in and out of the little cove, and then went out again into the larger one. The water was very still and glassy, and the pines on the far shore were black, and the ducks were dark against that sheet of silver.
One of them suddenly opened her wings and rose up almost entirely out of the water, and slid rapidly across the surface in a straight line. She moved impossibly fast, and silently. Beneath the surface her feet must have been propelling her, but you could see nothing of that. You could see only the smooth beautiful glide across the silver water - sleek, elegant, economic. It looked like magic. As she streaked along, the others rose up, one after another, and did the same, gliding swiftly along in the same direction, like a volley of silver bullets, smooth and soundless. At the end of the run they each dove into the green water, as she had, and vanished. A few moments later they were up, then they ducked back under, busy, fast, intent.
It was a training session: a mother and her brood, who look very similar at this time of year. The mother was teaching the juveniles how to dive for their dinners, and the streak across the water was part of a herding operation. The leader rose up, shot fifty feet across the water and then dove rapidly down, to scare the fish. She was herding them, ahead of her, or back toward the babies, I couldn’t see which, but those fish were being harried. The flock spent a lot of time in the small inlet beyond us, where they could corner the schools of fish against the shore. The juveniles ducked and gulped and rose and glided, just as they were being shown to do.
In the natural world there are different methods of teaching survival. Some animal mothers give directions to their offspring, and remonstrate with them – horses and elephants, for example, who usually have only one infant at a time, will do this. Ducks and geese have a different system. Most ducks have big clutches of eggs – ten or twelve. The mother would be exhausted by giving directions and remonstrating with so many offspring: imprinting is used instead. Imprinting is the mysterious process by which newly-hatched ducks and geese will fix their obedient focus onto their mother. (Or whoever is taking care of them. It could be a scientist with a clipboard. ) Once imprinted, a duck will follow docilely behind his mother and imitate everything she does.
These mergansers showed how important imprinting would be. Life in the wild offers no time for correction or directives. If a predator appears, a baby duck can’t wait to be rounded up, or told where to go - he must do exactly as his mother does, at once. What the ducks were doing was imitation for survival, and it was working perfectly. The younger ducks were mimicking their mother - the smooth glides across the water, the sudden deep dives into the flurry of fish. This, the mother showed, with each fluid movement, is how you live.
A week later they were back.
The tide was very high, covering the long soft grasses along the shore. The water was calm and silvery again, and the pines were darkening across the cove. The ducks, though, were different. Now they all seemed the same size, in just a week the juveniles seemed adult. They were no longer given the benefit of herding. No-one rose up and made the long glittering glide. Instead they moved smoothly along in the water, fast and efficient, making long black lines against the silver, ducking their heads, diving silently, then reappearing.
There were two fewer, as far as I could tell. Maybe two of them were in a different cove, with a different group, or maybe something else had happened. But fourteen of them were still together, still part of that rapid, silent flock, each of them moving in strong straight lines against the quiet, darkening water.