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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's talk Anas platyrhynchos  domesticus AKA ducks.

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I want a new duck

One that won't try to bite

One that won't chew a hole in my socks

One that won't quack all night

I want a new duck

Alison Stewart: If you want a new duck one that goes beyond the usual mallards that you may see in our area now is the time. Thousands of ducks treat New York like their personal winter retreat, and some people look forward to seeing them every year. People like Kate Hinds, who is a senior producer here at All Of It and our resident birder. She's here now to talk about winter ducks. Hi, Kate, from this side of the glass. Usually, you're in the control room.

Kate Hinds: Hey, Allison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you seen any great ducks lately? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media @AllOfItWNYC. We want to know where you went, what you saw, what your favorite duck is. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Of course, you can hit us up on social media that is @AllOfItWNYC. Why is winter a good time to see ducks in New York?

Kate Hinds: Yes, it's ultimately known as hot duck time or weird duck time because they all seem to descend upon our area, but many ducks are migratory. In the spring and summer, they're heading to their nesting grounds in the northern US or way in northern Canada close to the arctic circle. Then in the winter, they want to look for open water that isn't iced over and not too far from their breeding ground so they just come here.

Alison Stewart: I'm curious if you think this is a little bit of a curve ball. Our mild winter is having anything to do with seeing so many ducks.

Kate Hinds: I don't know the answer to that, but we do know that there are changes to migration based on what food availability. It happens, but that happens every year with all kinds of birds. If some birds are looking for seeds, and there's not a lot of seeds in Canada, they'll come south. If there's plenty of seeds in Canada, they stay north.

Alison Stewart: Can you give us an example of some ducks we can see here in winter?

Kate Hinds: Yes, I think we categorize ducks in two different bins. The dabblers or the divers. On ponds in our area, you tend to see mostly dabblers, although you will see some divers, and you'll see birds like northern shovelers which are these beautiful green iridescent white and brown ducks that are very obvious because their bill is very shovel-shaped. They tend to feed by going in circles. I call it a shoveler nato, but they group together in like groups of up to like 30 or 50 ducks, and they spin in a circle.

Then we have buffleheads which are these really adorable little black and white ducks that book dive underneath the water. [unintelligible 00:03:00] ruddy ducks, these are common ducks you'll see on ponds. Ocean ducks may be harder to see because they're offshore, but they are here, and they're all out there now waiting for you.

Alison Stewart: I want to know the names, bufflehead, ruddy ducks. Is there a reason they're called ruddy ducks? I think red.

Kate Hinds: Nothing is greater than bird names just in general. Some of the names are so great. Buffleheads are just, I don't know what a buffalo is, but I can tell you that its head is bubbly. Ruddy ducks are reddish ducks, but they are really known for having a blue bill. That's a mystery to me.

Alison Stewart: Buffleheads, I see in my notes here that they like to dive.

Kate Hinds: Yes, they dive, they're really small. It's hard to size ducks. What's a common sizing thing that I do is like think of a mallard and often you'll have a mallard because they're so common. The bufflehead are little tiny ducks compared to mallards. They'll be paddling around the pond, and you'll just be getting your binoculars focused on them and all of a sudden they disappear, and you're like, "What the duck, where did it go?" It's diving underwater, and they submerge for like 30 to 45 seconds to get food, and then they pop up like a cork, usually like 30 feet away from where you were looking for them and then you have to scramble to get them in your binoculars again before they go back underwater.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we are talking about ducks. You want to shout out or quack out any ducks you've seen recently or spots where you go to see them? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We're talking about ducks this hour with our resident birder and senior producer Kate Hinds specifically Winter duck watching. All right, you talked about divers and dabblers. What makes a duck a diver? That sounds obvious, but I think there's probably more to it than just that they dive.

Kate Hinds: There is more. They have to have the feet positioned correctly to go really far underwater. It's really hard to dive underwater when you're a duck because you're built to float, and you're buoyant. You really need to gain some traction with your feet and have strong legs. Their legs are positioned further back on their body, and they have bigger feet to help them make them better underwater swimmers. However, the position of their legs makes it more difficult for them to walk on land.

You won't tend to see diving ducks out and about on the sides of ponds and whatnot. They tend to be out in the water, but dabbling ducks like the mallards and whatnot do come out of the water.

Alison Stewart: What ducks are under the diver category?

Kate Hinds: A lot of them have good names like the bufflehead. There are birds called mergansers, and we have several different types of mergansers in our area. Birds called canvas backs, redheads, golden eye, Scoter, these are birds you can see off the shore of Coney Island right now. Ocean ducks.

Alison Stewart: Ocean ducks. Let's say I want to see some winter ducks. Where can I go?

Kate Hinds: There's so many places to go in New York City, we are such a duck haven. In Central Park, almost anybody of water in Central Park will have ducks. The reservoir is great, the lake is great. Something called the pond, which is up around hundredth Street is great. One of my very favorite places in New York City for any type of bird is Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge which is in Queens and also Brooklyn.

It's wonderful because you get multiple different habitats there. You've got saltwater, you've got fresh water, you've got ponds, you've got bay, you've got ocean front. You can see a ton of different types of birds at Jamaica Bay. It's fantastic. There's Shirley Chisholm State Park which is on the Brooklyn side. There was a lot of talk this weekend on a bird list that I follow about a [unintelligible 00:06:34] that was being seen from that park.

Shirley Chisholm, which is a relatively new state park, is a gold mine. It's really, really wonderful. Floyd Bennett Field is a wonderful place, too. In New Jersey, I just want to shout out New Jersey. This is kind of far, but it's so great. Long Beach Island, the Barnegat Lighthouse, you can find harlequin ducks. These are ducks that we don't really have in the New York City area. You can see them among island, but if you want to be guaranteed a Harlequin duck siding, go to Barnegat Lighthouse.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Charlie, I believe on line one. Hi, Charlie.

Charlie: Hi, guys. I'm on Roosevelt Island underneath the 59th Street Bridge, and there's a big field right there by where the tram, the cable car lands. They usually come in October sometime, and the Canadian geese are a huge flock, maybe a thousand. They stay about a day and a half. Usually, I can tell by how mild the winter is going to be by how late in the fall. I was waiting in October, they never came. Once, I remember a long time ago, they came in first week of November. This year they hadn't come at all.

Kate Hinds: Canada geese don't migrate so much anymore. They're a year-round resident in our area. I'm sure some do migrate, but in general, you can find Canada geese in New York City 365 days a year. It may just be that they're hanging out in another part of the city, or they found a different habitat.

Alison Stewart: Charlie, good luck.

Charlie: I saw a few by the water taxi. The water taxi lands, and they have some jetting there where they hide out of the wind. From time to time in October, I saw a few, and maybe as many as six or eight. I thought that would be the four-party that would be coming the next day.

[laughter]

Kate Hinds: That's where they tailgate.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear your duck sightings, or if there's any reason you particularly like duck season, we'd like to hear that as well. Where do you go? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Social media is @AllOfItWNYC. Does it matter when you go? Are ducks morning people or are they evening?

Kate Hinds: This is the really great thing about ducks is you don't have to get up super early to see them. That's just the nice thing about ducks in general. Whereas with a lot of other migratory birds like songbirds, they're high up in the trees, they're moving fast, they're hard to spot. There's something really peaceful about watching ducks because they are quite literally sitting ducks on a pond. If you're a novice birder, they're pretty easy to see. They tend to hold still. Sometimes I've noticed during the day they tend to sleep a lot. They want to stay warm. They'll tuck their bills into their feathers to--

Alison Stewart: I'm letting you know that Kate is putting her chin towards her shoulder.

Kate Hinds: I'm tucking my bill. I'm demonstrating. If they're on the pond, they're on the pond. They don't go away, which is nice.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Charlie on line four if possible. Hi, Charlie. Thanks for calling in.

Charlie 2: Hi. Thank you. I'm from New Jersey but I'm in Lakewood today. Lakewood New Jersey.

Alison Stewart: What do you see?

Charlie 2: We have a lot of geese by the way, a lot of geese. They cross the street sometimes. We have to wait for them a few minutes to finish crossing because there's a bunch of them. I like to take pictures of that. I wanted to say I was in Lakewood today, driving over the bridge, and I looked to my left, and I saw what looked like a beautiful white duck sitting in the middle of the lake. It almost looked like it was put there by the city for beauty purposes, but I wasn't sure if it could be a duck, even if it's white.

Kate Hinds: Oh well, it could be a goose. It could be a snow goose. They're super common in our area. In the winter, they migrate here in the thousands, or it could be a swan. We have swans.

Alison Stewart: Thank you, Charlie, for calling. This brings me to my next question. Let's say you want to get in on all this duck action, but you're a newbie, and you don't know what you're looking for or at. You think maybe it's a duck, like Charlie was wondering about a white duck. What kind of resources? Where can you point people to become more duck literate?

Kate Hinds: There are two fantastic and free apps that I want to shout out that both exist as websites. They're both put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. One is called Merlin, which is invaluable to birders because what it does is it lets you input some information. Like it'll say, ''Tell me about what you're looking at.'' Is it the size of a sparrow? Is it the size of a goose? What color is it? Where are you?" Once you input this information, it'll spit out a list of likely matches.

It'll tell you what it is you're looking at. We can play songs of the calls. If you know what it sounds like, it'll help you with that, too. There's also something called eBird, which is like a citizen science app where you can keep track of what you're seeing once you know what it is you're seeing. If you know what it is you want to see, you can go on the eBird website and look up hotspots, and find places where your target birds are congregating.

Alison Stewart: What kind of equipment do you use? What would you recommend somebody start with, or maybe price range?

Kate Hinds: Yes, binoculars are tough, and I'm not a binocular expert. I have a very basic pair of binoculars that were put out by Nikon. What I would recommend to people is go to a really good camera store like BNH photo has a lot of binoculars. There are websites for burgers and the Audubon Society's magazine.

Audubon magazine has a great guide to binoculars, but you don't have to spend a lot of money to get pretty decent binoculars. There are places in New York City, like Jamaica Bay, where you can borrow a pair of binoculars free to use to just test drive.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Anne from the South Shore of long island. Hi, Ann. Thanks for calling all of it.

Ann: Oh, thank you. What a great program. My dad taught me about birds. We live on the south shore of Long Island. It's a lot of shore birds, but he also taught me about the winter ducks. I'm looking at the great South Bay at the East Island Marina today. there is a raft of maybe 2000 Grant skis. Then they're magnificent. I know they won't be here for long. Then along the edges, we've got the diving ducks, and I'm watching six hooded Mcganzers.

Kate Hinds: Oh, they're beautiful.

Charlie: Lobbying up and down. Yes.

Kate Hinds: Those are beautiful birds. I was just watching a video this morning of brands on Jones Beach. Thousands of brands coming in. You're right there under all that Brant action.

Ann: I am. I'm in the branch Whirlwind right now.

Kate Hinds: Stay safe, Ann.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Judy online too. Hi, Judy.

Judy: Hi. This is Judy. I'm talking about the mirror where you can see wood ducks. Have you talked about those?

Kate Hinds: I have not talked about wood ducks, Judy, but they are gorgeous. In my humble opinion, they are among the most beautiful ducks that we have in New York. We're so lucky to have them because I used to think of them as a bird you saw mainly in Prospect Park, and I'm so excited to find them in the Harlem Mirror. There's even a couple hang or at least one hanging out in the reservoir in Central Park. It's really exciting to see them.

Judy: Yes, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw them.

Kate Hinds: If you haven't seen them, everyone should Google an image of wood ducks because they're spectacular.

Alison Stewart: Before we let you go, I understand we should also keep our eyes peeled for owls.

Kate Hinds: Yes, we get owls in the winter. There's a great horned owl that is hanging out in Central Park right now. There was a saw wet owl earlier this month. It's owl licious too. Just in time for superb owl, Sunday coming up. Get a Super. Bowl superb.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Go back to the control room. That's Kate Heinz, our inverter and senior producer. Thanks, Kate.

Kate Hinds: Thanks, Alison.

 

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