About eight pair of Harlequin Ducks have been hanging out in Chapin’s Gully for the winter. Here are a few of them on Easter Sunday. They might be here for a few more weeks but they will be gone soon.
Where do they go? Not tired of the challenge of waves crashing on the coast for variety they spend the summer swimming in white water streams up in Canada. That’s where they have harlequin sex and hatch the next generation. the name harlequin means a clown, a buffoon. But they seem pretty stately to me and they are monogamous, no clowning around. Earlier in the winter there would be an odd number and chasing each other around asking each other for dates like teenagers but by this time of the year they are all paired up. Dabblers, they dive for a minute at a time or more. Around here I think they are eating the mussels that are packed in attached to the rocks but a crab might get nailed too.
Good Morning Gloucester 