Diver or Sea duck...

Ryan Werden

Ryan Werden

Well-known member
So I recently saw somewhere an Oldsquaw classified as a seaduck. This confused me a bit as I always believed it to be a diver. Turns out it is indeed a diver, but while doing some research I found some very interesting facts on this duck. Most interesting was that this bird will forage in 200ft of water!! I found a great site, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology while looking up the diver/seaduck thing. Thought this may be interesting for others.

Oh, and I looked up what a mallard eats and it doesn't have "dead, rotting carcasses" listed so maybe they need to address that.
 
they are a Sea Duck, unless something has changed radically that I haven't read. They are within the Tribe Mergini along with Scoter, Eider, and Mergs.

I read the Cornell reference you linked and see where the confusion may come from - and they are called diving ducks because of how they feed (as in ducks that dive), that was not a taxonomic reference but a behavioral reference (sloppy writing on their part). Make sense?
 
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Yes, thanks Tod. Not sure if that was sloppy writing or sloppy interpretation on my part. I went back and read it again and see now that the context was, ducks that dive. So sea duck it is.

Thanks for the clarification.
 
I like the way Petersons divides Divers up: Bay Ducks and Sea Ducks.
They have the ringers, scaup, redheads and cans in with 'Bay Ducks".
Eiders, Scoters & Oldsquaw with "Sea Ducks".
GEs & Buffies are in with the Sea Ducks as well I think, but that is questionable since lots of GEs and BUffies spend the whole year on freshwater. And from what I understand, some scoters & oldsquaw do as well.
But in the end, they are all "Divers" based on feeding technique.
Except when the redheads and scaup feed by tipping in shallow grass beds.
Damn ducks, never read the rule books do they????
 
I kow that Tod already clarified this but this is how it is listed in the NJ migratory game laws and season booklet. I did not know that they actually classified them as sea ducks....​
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S​
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EA DUCKS; SEA DUCK AREA ONLY (107 days)​
Sept. 24 - Jan 26​
Daily bag limit: 7 singly or in aggregate to include long-tailed ducks, eiders and scoters, except​
no more than 4 scoters​

 
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