Bird of the Week: Hooded Mergansers

For the past week or so, I've been visiting a family of Hooded Mergansers at Stong Pond, in the middle of York University's Keele Campus. You can walk around and around the pond to get a closer view, but these guys will calmly move to the opposite side to keep a safe distance from anyone with a camera. Even when geese and mallards crash and slosh around in the same pond, these tough ducks just mosey along in a zen-like state. I'm not sure how tasty the fish in Stong Pond are, but these ducks spend quite a bit of time under water, looking for food. According to the Cornell ornithological lab:

The Hooded Merganser finds its prey underwater by sight. The merganser can actually change the refractive properties of its eyes to enhance its underwater vision. In addition, the nictating membrane (third eyelid) is very transparent and probably acts to protect the eye during swimming, just like a pair of goggles.