Greater Scaup
Makes a great start to the New Year
I wrote this essay six years ago, before the pandemic nudged many people into birding. Though birders’ numbers have increased since then, first-bird-of-the-year diehards are still a rare breed.
It’s New Year’s Day in Chicago. You look out your window just before dawn to see your neighbors walking hand in hand, hoods up, heads down, headphones over their ears. It’s cold, so their middle-aged-rap-star look does not surprise you. You assume they are on their way to the lake to watch the sun rise on the new year. But instead of getting in their car, they cross the street and walk together into the park. Under a group of basswoods across from the baseball diamond they stop, remove their headphones, throw back their hoods, raise heretofore hidden binoculars and look up into the trees.
You have just witnessed the time-honored New Year’s Day ritual of the first bird sighting of the new year. These two dyed-in-the-wool birders are bound and determined that bird number one shall not be a House Sparrow, so they secreted themselves to a place where they were more likely to see something else—maybe a Downy Woodpecker, or a Northern Cardinal. Nothing against the poor, maligned House Sparrow, but come on, “Anything but a House Sparrow!” is what most birders think at the start of each year.
For me, it’s the Canada Goose. In the South Shore park where I bird a lot, you can’t throw a stick without hitting one. This year I did not want my first bird at that park to be a Canada Goose. With ear buds in and blasting Tool’s “Pneuma,” so I would not hear the honking geese, I exited my car. Eyes to the ground, I walked toward the lake. For the past month or so—and as recently as the previous day—there had been a large flock of Greater Scaup in the bay between the shore and the distant breakwater, and I had decided that those stalwart regulars deserved to be this year’s species numero uno.
It was not easy to keep from glancing toward that area in the bay where the Canada Geese always congregate, but I was resolute as I approached the rocky shore. I looked up and could see a small flock of what I assumed were Greater Scaup on the water about 300 yards away. Thrilled that I had pulled off my New Year’s Day challenge, I raised the binoculars to verify that they were indeed Greater Scaup. My quick motion startled a bird that had been resting near shore barely fifty feet from me. It startled me in return, and without thinking, I looked at it as it took off low across the water with wings whistling. It was a Common Goldeneye.
Plan foiled. I wanted the Greater Scaup to be first, but I’d settle for the Common Goldeneye. Anything but a Canada Goose.
As if to make up for missing their number one billing spot, while I stood there flock after flock of Greater Scaup came flying in to join that first small group I had seen—but not confirmed—earlier. Within five minutes there were about 500 birds out on the water, most of them Greater Scaup, with Redheads mixed in.
The Greater Scaup is not a colorful bird, but the soft browns of the female, with her daub of white where the blue bill meets the face, and the sharply contrasting whites and blacks of the male make it a strikingly handsome bird. A flock of fifty to a hundred Greater Scaup flying across gray Lake Michigan on a cold, gray winter morning, when you can’t tell where the horizon ends and the sky begins, is an uplifting sight. For a brief second the birds disappear, as they bank toward you. Then when they bank away, their bright white bellies sparkle, a flash of jewels amid the somber surroundings.
Besides wanting to one-up the Canada Goose, I had another reason for wanting the Greater Scaup to be my first bird of the new year. The Greater Scaup is the only diving duck that is circumpolar, meaning their territory covers the entire northern third of the globe. As I sat watching yet another flock land on Lake Michigan, I imagined a similar scene being enjoyed in Tehran, in Toulouse, in Tokyo. And I imagined the birders in those places enjoying the spectacle just as I did.
It was a good first thought for the New Year.
What a sight! Being landlocked in SE Michigan, my numero uno bird was a flurry of juncos for the 3rd year running. Anything but a house sparrow for sure!