Not a duck

There is a whimsical assessment of whether something is what it appears to be. Known as the duck test, it asserts:

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Possibly the test imagined the mallard as the only type of duck. However, there are over two dozen duck species seen locally and they just don’t all sound the same: mergansers don’t sound like mallards and buffleheads don’t sound like goldeneyes. Yet, all of these ducks have a somewhat similar body shape and manner of swimming. But, do the first two criteria—looks like, swims like—serve to establish a swimming bird as being a duck?

Alas, no. Below are three birds seen in the last few days, each of which one might be tempted to call a duck, but which definitely are not: coot, grebe, loon. That these birds are not even closely related to ducks is old news to birders, but it is interesting that of my recently seen waterfowl, most were not ducks.

(Would the test work if thinking were confined to mallards? Even that has been satarized that with: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it needs batteries, you probably have the wrong abstraction.)

Rafts of American Coots are seen along the Nelson waterfront each winter—these ones are at Duck Bay. Not only is this odd-looking swimming bird not a duck, it is more closely related to cranes and rails than it is to ducks.

It is not uncommon to see four or more different species of grebes on Kootenay Lake. This is a pair of Horned Grebes, but as the month is October, they are in their non-breeding plumage and aren’t as spectacular as in the summer.

And then there are loons—a favourite of this blog. Not only are loons unrelated to ducks, they are not even closely related to grebes or coots. This couple of Common Loons swam by in the rain as I was taking the pictures of the Horned Grebes.