Resources related to Human Disturbance

Diving Duck Distribution, Abundance, and Food Habits in Chesapeake Bay

Diving ducks wintering in Chesapeake Bay during the last 50 years have accounted for 23% of Atlantic Flyway and 9% of North American populations based on aerial surveys. Continental and local factors have affected these population changes. Loss of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) due to degradation of water quality, has been a contributing factor, although, many other factors related to human population increases have been implicated in the changes in the distribution and abundance of diving ducks.

Diving Duck Distribution, Abundance, and Food Habits in Chesapeake Bay

Food Habits of Sea Ducks in the Atlantic Maritimes and Chesapeake Bay

Numbers of scoters (black, surf, and white-winged) and long-tailed ducks wintering in the Maritime provinces of Canada and the Chesapeake Bay (MD and VA, USA) have noticeably declined in recent years. Common goldeneye populations have also declined, but bufflehead populations have increased in numbers.

Food Habits of Sea Ducks in the Atlantic Maritimes and Chesapeake Bay

Sea Duck Ecology - Investigating the wintering ecology of surf scoters and long-tailed ducks

North American populations of breeding surf scoters and long-tailed ducks appear to be decreasing. Along the Atlantic coast, wintering populations of surf scoters are suspected to be decreasing, while the status of wintering populations of long-tailed ducks remains unknown. These trends have led conservation organizations to assign a "high" relative conservation priority to both species.

Sea Duck Ecology

Winter/ Nocturnal Duck Survey - Nantucket Sound Mass.

The purpose of the study was to gain a greater understanding of locations and behaviors of wintering sea ducks when they return each evening. The goal of the study was to identify the nighttime roosting location and behavior of the Long Tailed Duck. In particular any commuting movements in the sound and if so the height of flight. While focusing on Long-Tailed Ducks, night time observations of Eiders and Scoters were also to be included in this study.

Winter Nocturnal Duck Survey - Nantucket Sound Mass.
Cape Wind Energy Project

Atlantic and Great Lakes Sea Duck Migration Study

More than half of North American sea duck populations have apparently declined over the past 2-3 decades, although reasons for declines are unknown. Population delineation (i.e., the links among breeding, molting, wintering, and staging areas) is critical information needed to design and interpret monitoring surveys, to better understand population ecology and population dynamics, and determine limiting factors and potential strategies to improve conservation status of sea ducks.

Atlantic and Great Lakes Sea Duck Migration Study

Handbook of waterfowl Behavior: Tribe Mergini (seaducks)

As constituted here, the tribe Mergini includes all the species which Delacour and Mayr (1945) originally placed in the group.
Delacour later (1959) removed the four species of eiders and placed them in a separate tribe, Somateriini, between the dabbling ducks and
pochards. This was done apparently as a result of Humphrey's anatomical studies (1955, 1958), which suggested that the eiders might

Handbook of waterfowl Behavior: Tribe Mergini (seaducks)

Holocene underkill, Pleistocene Overkill, Chendytes lawi

PNAS March 18, 2008 vol. 105 no. 11 4077-4078
For many years, it was widely assumed that Chendytes had been lost toward the end of the Pleistocene, even though there were early reports of material from archaeological contexts. Survival well into the Holocene became clear in 1976, when G. V. Morejohn (11) reported C. lawi bones in an archaeological site north of Santa Cruz, California dated to between 5,400 and 3,800 14C years ago. He estimated that the extinction of this bird had occurred between 2,500 and 3,000 years ago.

Holocene underkill, Pleistocene Overkill, Chendytes lawi

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