Earth Almanac: March/April 2007

Crested Dancers

In most of the nation, save a swath through desert states, hooded mergansers—the smallest of our three merganser species—are returning from their winter range. They haven’t been away long or come from any great distance. They’ve just been hanging out in ice-free water. Watch for their dramatic courtship displays. Several males may pursue a female, raising their spectacular white crests, shaking or pumping their heads, stretching and flapping, and uttering a froglike crraaa-crrrooooo. Females respond by bobbing, jerking their heads up and down, and uttering a hoarse gack. Though awkward on land, hooded mergansers are superb divers, gaining crisp underwater vision by means of a third, transparent eyelid. Females nest in tree cavities or nest boxes. For nest-box plans, log on to www.birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse/pdf/boxwodu.pdf.

Sun Worshipers

We associate basking turtles with the blazing heat of high summer. But the best time to look for spotted turtles—one of our smallest and most beautiful species—is a bright, chilly day in late winter or early spring. When vegetation is still low in shallow wetlands from Illinois to Maine and south along the Atlantic coast to Florida, these semi-aquatic turtles emerge from their communal hibernacula and soak in solar heat. Because of their diminutive size (rarely more than four and a half inches long) you’ll have better luck if you bring binoculars or a spotting scope.

Look for them on logs and muskrat houses. Throughout the central and southern parts of their range, courtship starts about now, and if you don’t find baskers, you may encounter males frantically chasing females, sometimes under shell ice or between islands of snow. Several males may pursue one female, biting at her and one another. Eventually, she’ll let one catch up, place his concave plastron atop her convex carapace, and mate. She can store the sperm for up to five years.