[EBB Sightings] Lake Merritt Hybrid Merganser

Bob Power wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I got out to Lake Merritt for a little bit today. The Hooded
> Merganser X Barrow's Goldeneye was in fairly close near the Rotary
> Nature Center....

The 4th-Wednesday walk looked for him yesterday without success - glad 
he's still there. But someone on the walk came up with the best 
explanation I've heard for how such a creature occurs: not a matter of 
his daddy getting lucky, as I've always supposed, but of his grandma, 
Ol' Lady Hoodie, slipping an egg into a Barrows Goldeneye nest.

Apparently ducks do the mystery egg-put a lot, by way of improving their 
reproductive success, and they're not all that precise about the species 
of the nest they invade. So you could have a pure-blood Hooded Merganser 
raised by and imprinted upon goldeneyes, with this natural result in the 
next generation.

-- 
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