Many remember the excitement of the six Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks at the Mount Desert High School ponds, Bar Harbor. Found at those ponds on 28 May by a group including Rich MacDonald, we learned subsequently through Rich's sleuthing (and facebook - woe is me!) that the ducks were seen the day before, 27 May, by Steve Dugay and Brian Hamor at the north end of Long Pond in the town of Mount Desert. By the end of the first day at the high school ponds, one was found dead by Seth Benz. The next day, Michael Good bravely retrieved the dead duck and got into the hands of my friend Steve Ressel at College of the Atlantic. I finally had an opportunity, with the help of Mark Holmgren, to prepare the specimen.
Thanks to all for their help. Well done! The duck lives on and the final chapters are beyond.
The dead whistling-duck was a female and showed no overt signs of its demise. There were two small punctures in the dorsum, but these did not look life-ending and could have been made post-mortem. The bird had little to no fat, but that is typical of whistling-ducks. The breast muscle and organs looked healthy.
Turtles had started to nibble on the bird, leaving triangular bites on the neck and bill. After saving the trunk and other skeletal elements, I put them out to dry and begin their preservation. Within a day (probably within hours), a burying beetle had found the decomposing flesh. Yum! Flies were there too competing for the meal and the chance to lay eggs.
Photos of the beetle with a mite on its head (these mites travel with the burying beetles so they can feed on fly larvae):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9981230164/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9981318356/
The beetle is a Say's Burying Beetle (Nicrophorus sayi). Not many photos exist, taken in Maine at least, of burying beetles with Black-bellied Whistling-Duck eyeballs (wanted for the scleral ossicles). The beetle is named for Thomas Say, the same person for whom Say's Phoebe is named. Say was a self-trained naturalist, especially well-known among entomologists, and founding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences where I used to work (his portrait hangs in the library where I spent many hours). Say described many things including, for example, the Long-billed Dowitcher and coyote. Yes, the coyote, or prairie wolf. The original description of the dowitcher is in the same chapter of the Long expedition report as Say's description of the coyote--Chapter IX "Animals--Sioux and Omawhaw Indians--Winter residence at Engineer Cantonment." You can read these excellent accounts thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (coyote on page 168, dowitcher description on page 170, here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40216594). I point all this out to highlight the importance of specimens, the museums that care for them, and the historical side to natural history so often overlooked.
Here is a photo of the duck with new eyeballs:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrbevier/9983862736/
And here is a video showing the life of burying beetles and the dead things they like:
http://youtu.be/enazNu0YgPs
Louis Bevier
Fairfield
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