The red-breasted merganser (''Mergus serrator'') is a diving duck, one of the sawbills. The genus name is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

word used by Pliny and other

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

authors to refer to an unspecified waterbird, and ''serrator'' is a

sawyer *A sawyer (occupation) is someone who saws wood. *Sawyer, a fallen tree stuck on the bottom of a river, where it constitutes a danger to boating. Places in the United States Communities * Sawyer, Kansas * Sawyer, Kentucky * Sawyer, Michigan * S ...

from Latin ''serra'', "saw". The red-breasted merganser was one of the many bird species originally described by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

in his landmark 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'', where it was given the binomial name ''Mergus serrator''.

Description

The adult red-breasted merganser is long with a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan o ...

. The red-breasted merganser weight ranges from . It has a spiky crest and long thin red bill with serrated edges. The male has a dark head with a green sheen, a white neck with a rusty breast, a black back, and white underparts. Adult females have a rusty head and a grayish body. Juveniles look similar to females, but lack the white collar and have smaller white wing patches.

Voice

The call of the female is a rasping ''prrak prrak'', while the male gives a feeble hiccup-and-sneeze display call.

Behaviour

Food and feeding

Red-breasted mergansers dive and swim underwater. They mainly eat small fish, but also aquatic insects,

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...

s, and frogs.

Breeding

Its

breeding Breeding is sexual reproduction that produces offspring, usually animals or plants. It can only occur between a male and a female animal or plant. Breeding may refer to: * Animal husbandry, through selected specimens such as dogs, horses, and r ...

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

is freshwater lakes and rivers across northern North America,

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

, Europe, and the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sib ...

. It nests in sheltered locations on the ground near water. It is migratory and many northern breeders winter in

coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

al waters further south.

Speed record

The fastest duck ever recorded was a red-breasted merganser that attained a top airspeed of 100 mph while being pursued by an airplane. This eclipsed the previous speed record held by a canvasback clocked at 72 mph.

Conservation

The red-breasted merganser is one of the

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

to which the ''Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds'' ( AEWA) applies.

Gallery

File:Red-breasted Merganser, juvenile.jpg, left, Juvenile, Florida File:Mergus serrator MWNH 1041.JPG, left, Egg, Collection Museum Wiesbaden File:Red-breasted mergansers (14175107267).jpg, Three red-breasted mergansers at the rocks in Sipoo,

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

Red-breasted Merganser courtship dance.webm, Courtship display

References

External links

Red-breasted Merganser Species Account
– Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas - Red-breasted Merganser
* * {{Taxonbar , from=Q189609 red-breasted merganser Mergansers Holarctic birds Birds of Scandinavia Birds of Iceland Birds of Europe red-breasted merganser red-breasted merganser Extant Pleistocene first appearances