Surf Scoter

Fascinating facts about the Surf Scoter

• A surf scoter can dive to 60 metres — deeper than most scuba divers are legally allowed to go — and stay submerged for up to a minute while hunting for mussels and clams on the seafloor. Their bones are denser than other ducks', which acts like a diver's weights, letting them sink without wasting energy on swimming downward.
• Male surf scoters wear three distinct colour phases as they age, shifting from brownish to jet black over their first four years — a visual timeline of maturity that other ducks can read instantly. Their knob-topped bill and white eye patches only fully develop in breeding plumage, signalling readiness to breed to females watching from flocks of hundreds.
• Surf scoters migrate in flocks of thousands along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, following seafood maps written in their DNA. A bird ringed off British Columbia has been recaptured 5,000 kilometres away in California six months later, yet it returns to the exact same wintering bay year after year, navigating without landmarks across open ocean.
• In winter, a single bay can hold over 100,000 surf scoters packed shoulder-to-shoulder — the highest concentration of any sea duck in North America. These floating rafts are so dense that hunters once shot into flocks without aiming, taking dozens per volley; today's populations are still recovering from a century of that slaughter.
• Female surf scoters eat up to 60 mussels a day before breeding, building their bodies into mobile nutrient banks to fuel eggs. They then nest on Arctic tundra lakes far from the coast, arriving already pregnant with their first egg, because their breeding grounds are so remote and the summer so short there's no time to forage and reproduce simultaneously.

At a glance

About the Surf Scoter

As the Surf Scoter glides effortlessly across the turbulent coastline, its sleek, black silhouette is punctuated by a splash of orange, a vibrant beacon that announces its presence to the rugged shores it calls home. With a gentle bob of its head, the scoter navigates the waves with an air of nonchalance, its webbed feet paddling in perfect synchrony as it searches for the hidden treasures of the ocean floor. In this unforgiving yet majestic landscape, the Surf Scoter reigns supreme, its remarkable adaptability and resilience a testament to the enduring power of life in the wild.

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