Odysseus was a mariner born and bred, but soon after he pointed his ship toward home from the great battle for Troy, he made the mistake of offending Poseidon, the god of the sea, who vented his displeasure by throwing one obstacle after another in the sailor’s path. After years of aimless wandering across the Mediterranean, Odysseus summoned the ghost of a famous seer to ask for advice on how to get back to his wife and son.
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The phantom advised him to honor the sea god in a place “where men have never known the sea.”
How could he find such a place? Odysseus asked.
“Go overland and take an oar,” said the ghost. “The spot will soon be plain to you, and I can tell you how: some passerby will say, ‘What winnowing fan is that upon your shoulder?'”
I was reminded of that bit of Homeric humor a few years back as I traveled up the west bank of the Yellowstone River and, as a casual passerby, stopped to inspect LeHardy Rapids, a treacherous stretch of white water in the heart of Yellowstone National Park. As I looked out over the rocks, I saw a smallish dark bird flying just inches above the standing waves and foam.
I put the field glasses on him as he joined two of his brethren loafing on a flat-topped boulder well out in the roaring current. The white slashes on their heads, breasts, and backs stood out against the slate gray and rust of their bodies, the markings as exotic to my landlubber’s eye as birds of paradise. Not an oar among them, but here they were, three mariners just in from the Pacific, some 800 miles from the ocean. Harlequins.
Every species of duck is unique in its own way, but a few stand out from the crowd. The harlequin duck would certainly qualify as one of North America’s most unusual waterfowl species. Most ducks, whether they nest in the potholes of the Dakotas or on the Kamchatka Peninsula, migrate generally north and south. More often than not, harlequins travel east and west, spending the majority of the year on rocky points and shorelines along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, then flying inland to nest in the Boreal Forests of Canada and Alaska and in the northern Rockies.
The females of most duck species choose a new mate each winter or early spring. Harlequin hens mate for life. Among the puddle ducks, most hens nest in their first year of life. Harlequin hens may pair and nest at two years of age, but they generally have little success until they’re five. The typical puddle duck is lucky to live two or three years. A harlequin that reaches adulthood is likely to live several more years. One drake in western Canada lived to be at least 15, and a hen is known to have lived to the ripe old age of 17.
Most ducks raise their broods on wetlands of one kind or another. Of the more than 100 species of ducks in the world, only four typically breed along the rapids of high-country streams: the aptly named torrent duck of the Andes; New
Zealand’s blue duck, also known as the mountain duck; the Salvadori’s teal, a native of New Guinea; and the harlequin.
Continue Reading >>, By Chris Madson