Birder’s Notebook:

Long-tailed Duck––Better named “Aahaaliq”

Bird names are in the news lately. After years of consideration and much debate, the American Ornithological Society is renaming birds that were named after people and will give those birds names that reflect characteristics of the birds themselves.

The long-tailed duck was never named for a person, but it was ahead of the flock when its name was changed for social rather than biological reasons.

In 2000, the duck’s previous English name “oldsquaw,” that was derogatory to both Indigenous peoples and to the bird itself, was finally replaced with a more appropriate name. “Long-tailed duck” describes a defining feature of the male duck, but in my opinion, the Iñupiaq name “aahaaliq” would be one better.

Decades ago, Kotzebue elder Pauline George pointed out to me that the name of the fancy duck calling from the ice floes before us, “aahaaliq,” sounded just like the birds’ yodeling call. Often the Indigenous names of birds are onomatopoeias–– words that sound like what they are describing––for the call, which is a wonderful concept that can be incredibly helpful when learning to identify birds.

The unmistakable “aahaaliq” call resonates great distances across coastal waters and over the duck’s tundra breeding grounds. This signature call is broadcast by the male. He uses it most often in courtship, pair-bonding and mate defense, but he sometimes calls in winter, too.

The flocks of long-tailed ducks feeding now in icy waters along Norton Sound shores seem silent unless you are quite close to them. Then, you can hear their soft contact calls and quiet conversational murmurs when they surface between dives.

Long-tailed ducks breed in tundra and taiga habitats around the circumpolar north and are thought to be world’s most abundant Arctic sea duck.

On the Seward Peninsula, longtailed ducks are widespread and common breeders along lagoon shores, river estuaries, freshwater ponds and lakes. They nest in a variety of habitats including wet meadow and dwarf shrub tundra or on the beach, but always near water.

Long-tailed ducks are also a common sight at St. Lawrence Island where migrants pass, sometimes in large numbers, especially in spring. Variable numbers breed on the island, and nonbreeders and molting birds summer on the island’s lakes and lagoons. When leads and openings in the sea ice around the island permit, some winter there, too.

At age two, long-tailed ducks form what are believed to be longterm, monogamous pair bonds on their wintering grounds.

Spring arrival of long-tailed ducks peaks in late May and early June. Pairs move to their breeding territories as soon as open water allows, returning faithfully to their previously established territories.

They prefer nesting sites along shallow ponds with bottom sediment that provides murky cover for diving ducklings when the water is disturbed. Ponds without fish are favored because fish compete for the same foods eaten by the ducklings.

Males use a variety of head-shaking and bill-tossing displays to defend their breeding territories. After mating, the female leaves the male’s territory and selects a nearby nest site, often a previous site. Sometimes small clusters of females nest close together.

The female does not begin to form a nest cup until she lays her first egg in a bed of dried leaves. She adds vegetation and down as more eggs are laid, about a day apart.

The female begins incubation when her clutch is complete. Early in incubation the male departs to join other males at molting areas, leaving his mate to tend their nest and young alone.

In late June and early July large flocks of molting males can be seen in the peninsula’s coastal waters and protected lagoons. Pairs reunite on the wintering grounds.

The female leaves the nest twice a day, covering the eggs in down. The eggs are cold-hardy and can survive unattended for several hours in snow and subfreezing temperatures.

The downy ducklings leave the nest within a day or two of hatch, following their mother to the nearest water. They can feed themselves but are unable to dive at first, relying on the female to stir up food from the bottom. If food in the natal pond becomes scarce the female will lead her brood overland to new ponds with more food.

These arctic-adapted ducklings have good insulation and can maintain their body temperature within a day of hatch and need little or no brooding.

Long-tailed ducks are opportunistic foragers with a highly diverse and variable diet of animal prey, focusing on what is readily available. They are able to dive 200 feet deep, feeding at depths other seabirds cannot reach. To enable this feat, they have the largest relative heart mass of all waterfowl.

To swim and dive, these ducks flap their partially extended wings powerfully underwater. Unlike other sea ducks, they don’t use their feet to propel themselves. Long-tail ducks spend more time underwater than other species––when feeding they are underwater three to four times longer than they are on the surface.

In ocean waters marine invertebrates such as small crustaceans, bivalves and worms are preferred foods. They also eat fish eggs and small fish such as herring and sand lance.

In freshwater during the breeding season, they eat larval and adult aquatic insects, crustaceans, fish roe and vegetable matter.

By the third week of August most long-tailed ducklings have fledged, and females and fledglings move to coastal ponds or inlets to molt in protected marine waters or in the largest lakes.

Fall migration peaks in the last half of September. Long-tailed ducks winter in the Aleutians and in polynyas and along ice edges in the Bering

Sea. They regularly overwinter in open leads around Bering Sea islands and the Seward Peninsula. Wintering long-tailed ducks often form large flocks, sometimes with other diving sea ducks.

In recent years I’ve noticed and wondered about seemingly fewer long-tailed duck sightings on ponds and coastal waters within my limited orbit around Nome.

Monitoring abundance of this low-density species over its vast range is difficult and incomplete. However, limited data suggest that longtailed duck numbers are declining steeply along the west coast of North America. They are listed as “vulnerable” and classified as a “common bird in steep decline.”

Factors limiting the long-tailed duck population are largely unknown, but changes in the ocean environment due to climate change are impacting many seabirds and the marine food web on which they depend.

FEEDING BELOW SAFETY BRIDGE – A flock of long-tailed ducks recently gathered to feed at the outflow of Safety Sound below Safety Bridge. Flocks often form long lines, diving successively and surfacing in synchrony as this flock was doing, coming closer with each dive to where I sat on the beach. A continuous murmur of quiet conversation was audible during their brief breathers on the surface.

FEMALE AND DUCKLINGS – A female long-tailed duck is tending 12 ducklings on a tundra pond. Often females combine their broods. It is common to see one female with many ducklings or sometimes multiple females with a very large group of ducklings. Some females abandon their brood soon after hatch, leaving them to be cared for by another female.

WINTER PLUMAGE – This showy male long-tailed duck is in winter, nonbreeding plumage. Long-tailed ducks have three plumages over the course of the year and their appearance is almost constantly changing. The duck is named for the two long, slender, central tail feathers that stream out behind the male in his winter and breeding plumages.*

BREEDING PAIR – A pair of long-tailed ducks in breeding plumage is pattering over the surface of their breeding pond to gain speed for take-off. Like other sea ducks, long-tailed ducks are heavy-bodied and built for diving. They require a running start to get airborne.