John James Audubon Wood Duck

By Patrick McShea, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Pittsburgh area creek mouths harbor wood ducks at this time of year. The places where neighborhood streams surrender their flow to southwestern Pennsylvania’s big water are among the least accessible stretches of riverfront, so the early spring spectacle passes unnoticed by all but the most ardent river watchers.

Beneath bare branch canopies of sycamore and cottonwood limbs, small flocks of the birds replenish energy spent in recent migration flights. They use their bills to strain tiny invertebrates from the shallow riffles, wander muddy banks in search of acorns washed down from drier slopes, and sunbathe atop river-worn logs deposited during earlier periods of high water.

At rest a drake wood duck presents a gaudy mix of colors. His dark back, bronze flanks, and chestnut breast are topped by a head that sports a drooping, white-striped crest of iridescent green, a carrot orange bill, and fiery red eyes. The comparably drab hen is more strikingly marked than other female ducks by virtue of a broad white eye ring that imparts, to a human observer, an impression of powdery make-up.

Binoculars and a stealthy approach are both necessary to get a good look at these beautiful but wary birds. Because the banks of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio consistently document the variety of floatable debris generated by our throwaway culture, river edge views of wood ducks are often aesthetically marred by the inclusion of tires, mud-stained blocks of Styrofoam, empty beer cans, and all kinds of plastic containers.

Most of the creek mouth birds simply pass through the Pittsburgh area on their way to more secluded nesting sites across a range that stretches north to southern Ontario. For a small and apparently growing number of wood ducks, however, Pittsburgh’s rivers are home. Wood ducks nest in tree cavities and this habitat requirement is increasingly met amidst maturing timber on islands, undeveloped sections of bank, and steep river valley slopes.

Unlike our resident mallards and Canada geese, semi-tame birds whose large numbers and propensity for accepting handouts guarantees the presence of a flock at every marina and riverside park, wood ducks avoid encounters with people. Until they depart for their southern state wintering grounds in fall, breeding pairs of wood ducks and their offspring will pass spring and summer here largely unnoticed by thousands of recreational boaters.

In an account he wrote to accompany his portrait of the species some hundred and fifty years ago, naturalist John James Audubon describes an Ohio River scene in which an approaching steamboat caused a flock of wood ducks to quietly walk up fallen tree trunk from water’s edge to sheltering woods.

During the next six months wood ducks along Pittsburgh’s rivers will use that time-honored technique of quiet retreat to minimize detection by the operators and passengers of considerably more numerous watercraft.

Patrick McShea works for the Division of Education at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He can be contacted by sending email to: McSheaP@CarnegieMNH.Org .

3/16/2007