Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / RELOADED EP171 - Dabblers, Divers, Sea Ducks... What's The Difference?

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RELOADED EP171 - Dabblers, Divers, Sea Ducks... What's The Difference? · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  VO: Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, Reloaded, where we bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In Reloaded, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
• 0:32
  Chris Jennings: I've got doctor Mike Brasher, my cohost, in the studio, and we are gonna talk well, let's say this. Mike is going to clarify some of the differences between dabbling ducks, diving ducks, and even perching ducks, and maybe kind of hint on sea ducks a little bit. Now we're we're in referencing North American birds here, but, you know, we reference diving ducks, or puddle ducks, or, you know, all the time in a lot of our media that we do, and and I feel like maybe there's some of our listeners out there who really wanna get into the the real interesting differences, foraging, some of the anatomy that really separates these ducks. So, Mike, let's start with the puddle duck.
• 1:21
  Mike Brasher: Okay. You know, this is actually a it feels like a rather simple conversation, dabbling ducks, diving ducks, you know, what's the big deal? But but yeah. And and a scientist could probably say this about any topic that you bring up. We could we can really get into the details.
• 1:39
  It gets really exciting, but this this one does. And so so when we talk about dabbling versus diving, and you mentioned perching ducks, and then we can also throw sea ducks in here, and we can also throw stiff tailed ducks in here, ruddy ducks, and see, I'm already complicating it. We can throw all those into this conversation, but at the most basic level, dabbling versus diving, just keep it at those two levels, that relates to the primary mode of foraging. Another term for dabbling ducks there's a couple you've mentioned one of them already, you know, puddle ducks. The other is surface feeding ducks.
• 2:19
  That's another common, you know, term used to assigned to this group of birds, and diving and dabbling relates primarily to their mode of foraging exactly as it sounds. There's a certain group of birds that forages primarily by diving, and that would include your your your traditional diving ducks that you think about. There's another term for them. It's poachers, your redheads, your canvasbacks, your scalp, your ring neck ducks, and, of course, others as we go worldwide. Then also within that diving duck category, as a mode of foraging, a lot of people speak about sea ducks differently or as a separate group, and while at a taxonomic kind of tribe level they are, they're part of what's called the mergani, and the canvas backed redhead, scallop, ring necked ducks are a theanine.
• 3:07
  They're technically taxonomically different, but from a mode of foraging, they're all diving ducks. They all dive beneath the surface of the water for their food. So same with sea ducks, Not sea ducks, stiff tailed ducks, the ruddy ducks, their oxiurini is their tribal name. They forage by diving also. So the purpose for the purpose of this conversation, we're going to just use the dabbling versus diving nomenclature because where it gets really interesting is when we start talking about some of the associated physical adaptations that differ significantly between these two groups of birds, dabblers versus divers, and and it does get really interesting.
• 3:50
  And then so then on the the dabbling duck side, that's gonna consist of your mallards, your gadwalls, your teal, all those kind of even shovelers, we throw those in this same dabbling duck category. Now perching ducks, such as wood ducks and Muscovy ducks, are technically in a different tribal category, carinii. People probably pronounce that differently, but that's kind of how I'm pronouncing it, at least today. They pronounce it differently tomorrow. They are they're technically a different tribe, but they, again, forage primarily by dabbling at the surface of the water.
• 4:26
  They don't they don't dive just the same as Widgeon, Gadwal, Mallards, and those those species which are are in the tribe, anadonai. So, again, here we're making it a bit more complex than it needs to. But nevertheless, we're gonna throw wood ducks and Muscovy ducks into this dabbling duck category for the purpose of this conversation. And so where things get really interesting is where we talk about differences in the physical adaptations that come along with these two different groups of birds and their primary mode of forging. And I'm gonna talk about some of these, and and this can actually relate back to a previous conversation that we had about waterfowl identification where we're talking about how to look for certain physical traits to help you hone in on what a bird actually is.
• 5:11
  So first off, let's just we're going to start with the position of the legs. The position of the legs in diving ducks are set farther back on a bird in contrast to dabbling ducks. Dabbling ducks, the legs are more up under the belly. The big difference in those two settings, if you will, for the legs is that dabbling ducks can walk on land quite adeptly. They're really good at it.
• 5:37
  But you don't see many diving ducks walking on land. Their feet are set way back. Well, why are their feet set way back? Well, it's to aid in underwater propulsion.
• 5:45
  Chris Jennings: But that also forces them mean, people notice when a flock of divers jumps off the water, they kind of get a running start on the water. They have to. And that's something where you see, you know, a mallard or a gadwall will just jump straight up, and that's, you know, indicative of where that leg position is.
• 6:03
  Mike Brasher: That's part of it. That's certainly part of it. The other thing there relates to one of the other differences, and that's size and shape of the wings. Actually, the way they have to take off, the way divers have to take off is going to be more a function of the differences in their wing anatomy than the position of the legs. But you're right, it does play a role
• 6:23
  Chris Jennings: Legs are just there to help them a little
• 6:24
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. Yeah. But but even so the size of the feet also. And and I would encourage hunters or, you know, anyone that's just out looking at birds, certainly if you're a hunter, it's easy to do this when you have the bird in in hand. But if you have a diver with you in hand and a dabbler in hand, try to look for some of these differences, the position of the feet, the size of the feet.
• 6:45
  Diving ducks tend to have larger feet. Canvasbacks are the greatest example here, and and and some of the sea ducks, some of your eiders especially, and even even mergansers, have really large feet. And also their their thigh muscles are really well developed, again, because they're using them for that underwater propulsion. And you think you contrast that with with dabbling ducks, you know, the the the thighs, leg muscles aren't all that aren't all that well well developed. I mean, they're well developed, but they're not as big and robust and tough, you might even say, as some of those you get on diving ducks.
• 7:19
  The the hind toe. There's also a difference in the hind toe between diving ducks and dabbling ducks. It's called the hallux. And on the diving ducks, they tend to have a larger hind toe than do the dabbling ducks. That's believed to be associated with some underwater steering and maneuvering.
• 7:39
  So the legs, there's a big difference in size of the legs, size of the feet, and positioning of those legs between divers and dabblers. Again, it's related to that mode of foraging, and this is a spectrum. Let me make that clear. There's variation as you go from, you know, across the dabbler and diver categories. But generally speaking, diving ducks are going to be are going to be heavier birds.
• 8:07
  They're gonna be stouter looking birds. That in some way translates to how they look, how to their profile on the surface of the water when they're sitting on the water. A lot of people get good at identifying whether a bird is a diver versus a dabber by the way it it it presents itself when sitting on the water. Dabbling ducks tend to sit up on the water. You can actually see that the tail profile much more defined on a dabbling duck than you can a diving duck.
• 8:35
  Diving duck, that tail is oftentimes just down flush with the water, and you can't see a defined tail. Since I mentioned tail, another one of the things that that differs between divers and dabblers is the shape and size of the tail. And here we're going to start to get in. We're going to start transitioning to transitioning from a discussion about kind of underwater maneuverability to aerial maneuverability and how there are some differences between divers and dabblers kind of as a as a consequence of some of these modes of foraging. The tail on dabbling ducks is bigger and broader, typically, you know, relative to the size of the bird.
• 9:16
  This has to always be kept in mind. Diving ducks tend to have a more slender tail or maybe a more compact tail, you might say. They use the tail for underwater as an underwater rudder. I believe it's I believe that that's one function of it. And so when we think also now we can talk about kind of the wings and the and the the tails from an aerial maneuverability perspective between these two groups of birds.
• 9:41
  And and so on the on the tail side of things, dabbling ducks tend to occupy habitats that in areas that where they need greater maneuverability. Think about diving ducks. They occupy open water habitats, open open water, and so they don't they don't have to navigate around trees, they don't have to navigate in through trees. So that that tail, the larger tail on a on a dabbling duck enables it to helps it with some of the maneuverability. There's also a wing issue here that we'll start to transition to, but there's a difference in the
• 10:13
  Chris Jennings: tail a fighter jet rather than a seven forty seven.
• 10:17
  Mike Brasher: That's well, that's exactly right. And so that's something that's true across all different groups of birds when you look at the way they fly and how they are adapted to fly. Generally speaking, birds that occupy open open air environments and need to travel faster or else can travel faster, they have longer, more slender wings relative to their body size. That is true in diving ducks. There's something known as wing loading, That's the ratio of body mass to the size of the wing.
• 10:55
  And diving ducks have a higher wing loading. They have higher a larger body mass relative to to the size of their wings. Their wings tend to be more pointed, and so more pointed, more slender wings enable faster flight, but it comes at a cost, and that cost is in their in air maneuverability. You think about wood ducks having to navigate in through the trees, their wings are broader and more rounded at the tip. The perfect example, the extreme example of a type of bird that has really rounded, broad wings is an owl.
• 11:30
  Think about where lives. It lives in the forest most of the time, And so those broad wings with the rounded tips enable it to enable it to maneuver much more deptly in those forested environments.
• 11:50
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 12:06
  Chris Jennings: You know, one thing that I wanted you to point out again, and you kinda touched on it briefly, you know, this is a spectrum. Basing all of these the separations of these different different species and categorizing them into diving and dabbling doesn't mean that there's not differences within the dabbling ducks in the way that they forage. I mean, were kinda talking off air about the way that, you know, a shoveler is still a surface feeder, but it has a little bit different way that it it forages in comparison to a green winged teal. And I think that's something important for our audience to kinda recognize. Also, you know, what are some of the ways that even though dabbling ducks are supposedly built for a little bit more acrobatic in some tighter spaces, I mean, there's no duck hunter out there that would say that a ringneck, a flock of ringnecks coming over your back shoulder at about 30 mile an hour with a, you know, 30 mile an hour wind behind them, I mean, that's some acrobatic display.
• 13:04
  So I don't want you I don't want our audience to think that we're just saying the diving ducks. Basically, I'm just trying to get some diving ducks a little bit of love.
• 13:10
  Mike Brasher: If you were to take a canvas back and compare its wing, wing shape, wing size, wing structure to that of a ring necked duck, you're gonna notice a big difference. So a ring necked duck wing boy, say that six times fast.
• 13:21
  Chris Jennings: Mhmm.
• 13:22
  Mike Brasher: Ring necked duck wing looks more probably looks more similar to a dabbling duck wing than it does a canvas backed wing or a common merganser. I had to pause I had to catch myself there because hooded mergansers are going to occupy a lot of those wooded habitats. And although they're a sea duck by taxonomic classification, their wings are gonna be more adapted to those wooden environments, and so you would see a more a typical somewhat more rounded wing wing contour for them, certainly compared to a red breasted merganser, a common merganser, or an eider. They're gonna have really large, long, pointed wings. And so, yes, a ring necked duck is a great example of that variation even within these different groups.
• 14:03
  They are a species that does occupy a lot of those somewhat forested habitats on occasion, and so, yes, that's an absolute great point there. You know, one of the other things that I we started to touch on that I missed, so I need to go back, was talking about the liftoff characteristics of these different birds that and I mentioned how that relates to the different, you know, wing different wing shapes. And so what happens there is you have, for these dabbling ducks, you have the larger, broader yeah, relatively larger, broader wings compared to diving ducks, and that enables them to gain more thrust, or not thrust, lift. It would be great to have someone who is an expert in aerodynamics talk about this because a lot of these same kind of or all these same concepts apply to aircraft, But these larger, broader wings enable the dabblers to achieve greater lift from a stationary position. Diving ducks have these relatively smaller, more pointed, less broad wings.
• 15:06
  They can't achieve that same lift from a stationary position. So that's why they have to get a running start to actually take off. And the fact that they have to take get a running start, you know, it kinda relates to where you where you find them. And this is where it gets really difficult for me because I'm not an evolutionary ecologist, and you start thinking about these different traits, and the natural question is, well, what led to which? Did you know, why does which came first?
• 15:33
  The the narrow wings or the of the the smaller wings of a diving duck or the forging preferences of the diving ducks. So there's an entire field on this, the evolution of wing characteristics, shapes, tail characteristics, feather characteristics as it relates to selective pressures, basically, whether it be driven by the method of foraging or the habitats that they occupy, and it can actually get really fascinating. And so just sort of at the other extreme when you think about the effect of the shape of a wing on a bird's ability to achieve lift. Think about how big a great blue heron is.
• 16:10
  Chris Jennings: Yeah.
• 16:11
  Mike Brasher: How does it take off? It from a stationary position, it it kind of jumps and gets and and achieves incredible lift from a stationary position. It doesn't have to run. Contrast that with with your sandhill cranes. I mean, they do typically have to get a bit a few steps.
• 16:26
  Take a few steps, and so that's going to relate to some differences in the size of those wings and shape of those wings relative to the body size of those birds, and so then you start asking the question, well, why those differences? I'm not the person to answer
• 16:38
  Chris Jennings: those Talking about the shape of the wings and the aerodynamics and and some of those differences, I just kind of looked up, you know, a couple fun facts, which I think, you know, you might even find interesting, that the fastest duck ever recorded was a red breasted Murganzer, and the top airspeed on that was a 100 mile per hour by it was being chased by an airplane, Yeah. But that's pretty cool, and that, you know, those fall into that, well, I guess under the diving ducks, as we would say.
• 17:04
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. Put that put that bird in a wooded environment and see what
• 17:07
  Chris Jennings: it does. Right? Exactly.
• 17:08
  It's going to have some some tough, you know, its wings are going to get busted up. But you know, at Canvasback, you know, they've been recorded at at speeds of up to 72 miles per hour. And and while they are a much bigger dog, you know, people assume that because of their size they're a little slower. And I think this kind of plays into even hunters having a difficult time hitting these these birds that, you know, these things are being clocked at 72 miles per hour, where, you know, some of the top speeds of some of the puddle ducks, which are assumed to be the fastest duck, you know, the top speeds of like blue winged teal are like 30 miles per hour, and that's probably cooking it for blue winged teal. But it's the shape of the wing, the way that they move through the air, the size of the target.
• 17:50
  Yeah. But all of that comes back to, you know, the different variations that whether it's, you know, flight needs, forging needs, you know, the variations of of diving and and puddle ducks.
• 18:00
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. Yeah. And and you you mentioned earlier we wanted to go down this down this other path talking about differences in kind of bill structure.
• 18:09
  Chris Jennings: Mhmm.
• 18:09
  Mike Brasher: Within these groups, I've talked about how dabbling versus diving, those labels primarily relate to different modes of foraging, and that is true. But even when you look within those groups, look within dabbling ducks, there are degrees of specialization, and though in foraging, even at that surface level, at that dabbling level, and shovelers are a fantastic example. There are actually a couple of really good examples here. Shovelers are probably the best because they're a surface feeding duck, dabbling duck, but they have this fine, very small lamellar spacing which enables them to filter out these really small invertebrates. Widgen and Gadwal, they're more vegetarian specialists.
• 18:52
  They're still I mean, and they can be in larger open bodies of water, but they're just gonna serve forage at the surface, and their bills are kinda an intermediate structure. Actually, we didn't have a bill that's almost more like a goose and able to kinda clip the vegetation. And so then when you look in in the the category of divers, you can find this same level of of variation. Morgansers are a great example. Sawbills, they have a serrated bill, enables them to catch and hang on to fish, their prey.
• 19:22
  Skoters, specialized bill for foraging on mollusks, and then canvasbacks are rather unique in the shape of their bill. They're one of the species that actually dives all the way, typically dives all the way down to the bottom of the wetland and digs roots around in substrate, in the mud for a tuber of some sorts, and so all of those differences are reflected in differences in their bill structure. So we didn't want people to assume that all divers forage the same on the same types of foods, and all dabblers forage on the same types of food. There are differences certainly within those categories. It's just these broad labels of dabblers versus divers is kind of what we've how we label their primary mode of foraging.
• 20:13
  Chris Jennings: You know, just speaking of foraging, I had one more little cool duck fact that I had looked up, and years ago, a long tailed duck was captured in a fishing net at a depth of 240 feet. So now you go back to that, you know, the the way that those legs are built. You know, think of 240 feet down. I mean, that's a that's pretty interesting. Yeah.
• 20:35
  You know, just to see how powerful and what great underwater, you know, swimmers these these ducks are, so
• 20:41
  Mike Brasher: Some dabbling ducks will dive. Mhmm. Any hunter will tell you that they have seen a dabbling duck dive on them, especially if it's wounded and they're trying to get away. But you've also probably have seen that it's not very effective at diving deep for extended periods of time. Contrast that with a diving duck.
• 20:58
  Yeah. There's a huge difference in the escapability of those between those birds. But dabbling ducks will certainly dive to some extent, but they're just not the specialists that divers are naturally. And each one
• 21:10
  Chris Jennings: of these species have you know, and there are resources out there that I'm sure you you probably know right offhand, but there are resources out there that would show, you know, a green winged teal, you know, feed, forages in, you know, four to seven inches of water. You know, there's obviously other variations of that. A pintail, you know, will feed in this much water. And so, you know, there are resources out there for people to be able to look up and show exactly, you know, that each species may have its own, you know, level of where it's comfortable foraging.
• 21:39
  Mike Brasher: Yep. And one thing that that I'll leave folks with, I always try to bring in some other reference to other groups of birds because I just think migratory birds are just fascinating in general. Waterfowl, of course, hold a very special place in our in our hearts. We all know that. But but migratory birds and a lot of the things that we've talked about apply to them as well, and so if you find yourself and we're surrounded by them all year.
• 22:00
  Down here in the South, we don't get to see the breeding ducks, you know, just so much unless we're talking about urban mallards and Canada geese. But when we talk about other migratory birds, raptors provide a really good look at differences in wing shape because they soar above you, and you can actually see the profile of those wings. And just try to take notice of those differences, especially if you're able to see if you're lucky enough to see a falcon of some sort, you can you notice that really elongate, pointed wing. There are a lot of aerodynamic kinda discussions behind that particular feature, reduced drag, faster speeds, things of that nature, versus a broad winged hawk, a red winged hawk, or a red shouldered hawk, or a red tailed hawk that have a more broad kind of wing shape, and so. And of course, vultures, turkey vultures, black vultures, they also give you a good view of that rounded shape of the wing in their certain soaring type of flight.
• 22:58
  So a lot of interesting things to talk about with respect to flight and birds, so just leave folks with that.
• 23:02
  Chris Jennings: Yeah. No. And I think this conversation that you you kinda brought up is a really good example this fall for people to, you know, when you're out there, and it's even more so if you have like a young hunter or someone who's not super familiar with waterfowl hunting. Hopefully this conversation will give you the opportunity to, you know, shoot a dabbling duck and shoot a diving duck, and take those wings, take that, you know, that body mass, take the legs, the feet, you know, all of that, and and really kind of hopefully our conversation is really sparking more conversation within, you know, the waterfowl hunting community to really really appreciate these birds and learn a little bit more about them.
• 23:37
  Mike Brasher: Absolutely.
• 23:38
  Chris Jennings: Thanks, Mike.
• 23:39
  Mike Brasher: Thank you, Chris.
• 23:40
  Chris Jennings: I'd like to thank doctor Mike Brazier for joining us today to talk about dabbling in diving ducks and the differences and some of the similarities. I'd also like to thank Clay Barrett, our producer, for doing a fantastic job of getting the podcast out. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us today and supporting wetlands conservation.
• 23:58
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• 24:20
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