Common Mergansers on the Bagaduce River, Brooksville

[Bob Knight]

For the last week we have had a flotilla of Common Mergansers.  They arrive in a whoosh and travel like on a navel manuever swimming, diving, skittering over the water.  Must be some sort of cooperative feeding behavior.   

This morning at about 0700 somewhere between 35 and 50 of them swooped into the cove and were dashing around --flying, diving, flapping over the water for about 20 minutes then they were gone!   Really quite spectacular.  I have seen smaller groups of Red Breasted Mergansers do something like this, but never Common Mergs and never this many.

Feels like spring for sure!