{"id":12240,"date":"2014-12-18T19:32:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T03:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12240"},"modified":"2014-12-18T20:07:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T04:07:33","slug":"precocious-goldeneyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12240","title":{"rendered":"Precocious goldeneyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The male Common Goldeneye Duck is in his breeding plumage from October to June. That presumably means that he is prepared to breed, not that he is about to breed. So, I thought nothing of it when three strapping lads swam by in mid December, each decked out\u00a0in breeding plumage. What then happened was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>In December, three Common Goldeneyes swam by. Spring is a long way off.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12244\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/goldeney141218bs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, despite the absence of females, they began to exhibit courtship behaviour: each\u00a0tossed its\u00a0head back.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12247\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/goldeney141218es2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This was followed by head pumping,<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12241\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/goldeney141218ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And water twitching. These actions are all\u00a0courting behaviour.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12242\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/goldeney141218cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Apparently satisfied that they now had their act together, they flew off: &#8220;OK, now let&#8217;s go and find the girls.&#8221;<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12243\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/goldeney141218as2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The male Common Goldeneye Duck is in his breeding plumage from October to June. That presumably means that he is prepared to breed, not that he is about to breed. So, I thought nothing of it when three strapping &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12240\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12240"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12261,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12240\/revisions\/12261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}