Red-breasted Merganser

About the Red-breasted Merganser

The Red-breasted Merganser is a fish-catching duck with a punk haircut. Both sexes wear a ragged double crest that always looks windblown, and the long, thin, saw-edged red bill gives away the trade: this is a pursuit predator that chases fish underwater like a feathered torpedo. Males in breeding dress add a dark green head, white collar, and rusty chest.

They breed across the far northern edge of the continent and winter mostly on salt water, which makes them common on the Texas coast from November through March. Inland birds are scarcer -- singles and small groups drop onto the larger reservoirs, where they stand out among the rafts of more familiar divers. They are among the fastest ducks in level flight, clocked at over 80 miles per hour.

This bird was on Inks Lake in Burnet County on January 20, 2025 -- the same Hill Country visit that produced the Golden-crowned Sparrow at the park blind. A merganser working a clear granite-country lake will dive constantly, surfacing somewhere new each time.

The trick to photographing a diving duck is to track the underwater shadow and be ready when it pops. Every dive buys you a few yards of drift closer -- as long as you move only while the bird is down.