Chinese Merganser

It is a striking sea duck with a thin red bill and a scaled dark pattern on the flanks and rump. Both sexes have a crest of wispy elongated feathers, reaching almost to the shoulders in adult males and being fairly short in females and immatures. The adult male has a black head and neck, white breast and underparts, and blackish mantle and wings, except for the white innerwings.

Picture of the Chinese Merganser has been licensed under a GFDL
Original source: Own work
Author: BS Thurner Hof
Permission: GNU Free Documentation License

The Chinese Merganser is classified as Endangered (EN), considered to be facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild.

The Chinese Merganser (Mergus squamatus) is also known as the Scaly-sided Merganser, with good reason; this dashing duck resembles a goosander with a wispy topknot and fish scales along its flanks. While this merganser does maintain a strong presence in China throughout the year, it may breed as far north as Russia and winter as far south as Thailand. It is also a species in rapid decline, considered vulnerable by some authorities and endangered by others. More

Chinese Mergansers (Mergus squamatus) are summer residents in the Changbai Mountains, China. They arrive during March and stay until late September or early October. They are usually in pairs or small flocks. Most breeding sites were located along streams running through virgin forests, especially mixed conifer and broad-leaf forests. Nests were built in cavities of large diameter ( = 57 cm) trees bordering streams and clutch size averaged 10 (range 8-12) eggs. Egg-laying began in early April and incubation lasted 35 d. More

The Chinese Merganser or Scaly-sided Merganser (Mergus squamatus) is an endangered typical merganser (genus Mergus). It lives in temperate East Asia, breeding in the north and wintering in the south. More

png Chinese Merganser on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:Chinese Merganser Retrieved from "http://en.wiktionary. More

the Chinese merganser and the goosander, both of which occur in eastern Asia. Our merganser may owe its origins to the ancestors of one of these species during a hypothetical period when trans-equatorial migration had been adopted during the Pleistocene. Its evolution, primarily in New Zealand, entailed changes that are repeated in other bird colonists of southern islands, loss of male plumage, loss of pattern in the downy chick, and increasing tameness, if not reduction in the powers of flight. More

China Merganser, Chinese Merganser) so far had been reported widely scattered in China, and the bird usually found in small flock or in individuals with quite rare of a case of more than 10 birds gathered at one locality. During the 1990s, though results of surveys revealed a few wintering flocks of the bird but no longer reported being stable. More

The Chinese Merganser, or Scaly-sided Merganser (Mergus squamatus) is a typical merganser. This is a striking duck with a shaggy crest and scaled flanks. The adult male has a black head and neck with a long crest, white breast and underparts, and blackish mantle with white innerwings. The female has a buffish head and a wispy crest. Their breeding habitat is rivers in primary forest in south-east Russia, North Korea and north-east China. More

Many details concerning the Chinese Merganser remain a mystery to ornithologists. Inhabiting areas of southeastern Russia, this duck is a reluctant and poor flier. A resident bird, it remains non-migratory except in severe weather conditions, when it has been spotted in China and Korea. The Chinese Merganser is about the same size as the Red-breasted Merganser. It has a similar, but longer, dark green, spiky crest on its head. The Chinese Merganser drake is distinguished from the male Red-breasted Merganser by its plumage. More

Picture of Mergus squamatus above has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial.
Original source: Blake Matheson
-Blake Matheson -Author: Blake Matheson
Permission: Some rights reserved
Order : Anseriformes
Family : Anatidae
Genus : Mergus
Species : squamatus
Authority : Gould, 1864