Blue geese, clowns, sea mice, and squeakers are a number of the nicknames given to the harlequin duck. Regardless of what you name them, harlequins are one of the stunning, most fascinating, and least understood waterfowl species. They are, by each sense of the phrase, a “trophy bird” for critical waterfowl hunters. But few will ever come throughout a harlie within the area resulting from their distant places and strict looking rules.
In 2022, Washington State fully closed harlequin looking in response to elevated stress that was unsustainable. Now, Alaska stays one of many solely places the place hunters can constantly harvest a blue duck. This makes the harlequin one of many hardest birds to hunt for these in pursuit of harvesting the entire North American waterfowl species. Besides the problem of efficiently taking a harlie, their beautiful plumage is what attracts hunters from all around the globe to distant places. Here’s every thing else you want to know in regards to the stunning harlequin duck.
Appearance and Vocalization
Like most feminine geese, the hen harlequin has a set of browns and olive-browns, with a speckled white chest, stiff black tail feathers, a white face patch forward of the attention, a roundish white patch behind the attention, and a stubby albeit heavy invoice. They’re additionally small, comparable in measurement to a blue-wing teal, tipping the scales at simply over one pound.
If you have been to combine a kaleidoscope with a field of Crayola crayons, you may find yourself with one thing that resembles a drake harlequin. Simply put, they’re a stunning fowl. Overall, the drakes characteristic a tender slate blue shade with chestnut purple sides. A white facial patch in entrance of the attention runs upward overtop the top, bordered by black and the identical chestnut striping. A white semi-collar runs alongside the perimeters of the neck however doesn’t totally join. They even have a skinny white “shoulder” stripe that’s outlined in black. The drake shares the hen’s stiff darkish tail, whereas his wings are a darkish brown with blue iridescent highlights and white stripes close to the physique. They’re barely larger than the hens, weighing just below one and one-half kilos.
Harlequins are a surprisingly vocal duck, with a repertoire of high-pitched mouse-like squeaks—therefore the moniker sea-mice—and fast-paced whistling peeps which can be brief, however machine gun fast. Some describe the sound as a staccato whine.
Habitat
Unlike mallard hens that favor to nest in knee-high sheltering grass, harlequin hens nest alongside turbulent mountain streams and rivers. Here, and all through the spring and summer time, each drakes and hens appear fairly content material within the whitewater. They forage, swim, and even walk on the underside of rivers and bays seeking aquatic bugs like caddisfly larvae, hellgrammites, and dragonfly nymphs, in addition to the occasional vegetative materials.
Harlequins winter in coastal saltwater environments, usually in shallow (lower than 25 toes) water depths and rocky (wave-washed cobblestone) shorelines. As documented by the Sea Duck Joint Venture—a bunch shaped in 1999 as a part of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP)—blue geese are “relatively tame, use near-shore habitats, and have high site-fidelity,” thus making them extraordinarily vulnerable to looking.
Distribution and Population Statistics
Though harlequins are considered a fowl of the West Coast, there are two distinct and fairly separate populations of blue geese within the U.S. and Canada. The better-known western inhabitants makes its home from roughly the Rocky Mountains, together with the Canadian Rockies, westward to the Pacific, and wintering from the Aleutian Islands south to Oregon.
The japanese inhabitants, the majority of which inhabits a area from Quebec and Labrador south to Newfoundland and New Brunswick, is additional segmented into two teams primarily based on the place every winter. One group winters in southwestern (coastal) Greenland, and the opposite within the Maritimes and New England states, primarily the Penobscot and Jericho bays of Maine.
For many years, Washington was the one state within the Lower 48 the place hunters might reliably harvest harlequins. Today, because it’s been because the 2022 season, that is now not an choice. Waterfowl biologists decided that blue duck populations have, resulting from a dramatic improve in harvest, dropped to ranges that can’t, if the harvest have been to proceed, be sustainable for the long run.
At one time, Washington hunters might harvest seven harlequins every day. This dropped to 1 every day after which to 1 per 12 months till 2022, when the taking of blue geese in Washington was closed completely. It’s fascinating to notice that whereas harlequins are off-limits in Washington, the birds are categorized merely as geese within the states of Oregon and California and, subsequently, could be harvested. However, it is extremely uncommon to kill a harlie in these areas.
But there are nonetheless alternatives for these wishing to test a harlequin off their bucket listing in Alaska. For these looking The Last Frontier as non-residents, it’s authorized to take 4 (4) harlequins per season. Though a DIY hunt in Alaska for non-residents is actually doable, most, if not all, harlequin seekers make use of the companies of an clothing store who can’t solely level the harlie hopefuls in the best course however possess all of the gear essential to hunt Alaska’s saltwater each safely and efficiently.
Hunting Methods
Successfully looking harlequins lies extra in the best gear and the placement than it does the decoys. As talked about earlier, blue geese are terribly site-specific; that’s, they’ve a bit of shoreline they like, and if one goes there and is affected person, the little geese can be by. However, the trick behind the harvest usually lies in an acceptable boat, a more-than-capable captain on the helm, the power to learn a tide desk, and native data.
Harlequin spreads are extremely small by comparability to most conventional puddle duck or diver rigs. They often vary from six to 10 or 12 individually rigged and infrequently hand-carved and painted by hand artistic endeavors. No calling is required; nevertheless, a pointy eye and/or binoculars will definitely assist reply the query of whether or not or not it’s a mature harlequin to take.
As a trophy fowl certain for the taxidermy studio, harlequins are finest gunned with feather-friendly dense patterns of smaller, non-toxic shot, corresponding to Hevi-Shot’s 2-3/4 inch Hevi-Bismuth 5 or 6 shot.
Everything apart, crucial half about looking harlequins is getting the place you want to be. And the place you want to be these days to kill a harlequin is Alaska. The little blue duck? He’s a stunning bonus to the journey of a lifetime.
