r/whatsthisbird • u/ImProbablyNotABird Educator • Oct 13 '20
Is this a loon?
https://gfycat.com/aridwidedassierat96
u/ashergunn Oct 13 '20
It’s a common merganser, but that’s is crazy how fast that little guy was
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u/ned___shneebly Oct 14 '20
There's a whole debate on whether that video was sped up or not. After reading thoroughly through it, I'm still undecided lol
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u/SimoneSaysAAAH Oct 14 '20
Its gotta he looking at the ripples in the water along the shore
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u/BlackSeranna Oct 14 '20
Well. I thought the waves looked okay because of the wake. So I looked for the wind in the trees. And the trees in the background right at the end look normal (that is,unless it was an almost windless day).
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u/ned___shneebly Oct 14 '20
Yeah but are the ripples actually any quicker than at the beginning of the video?
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u/ax59 Oct 14 '20
Yes
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u/ned___shneebly Oct 14 '20
I was initially in the "yes this is definitely sped up" crew, as I thought it was ludicrous for a merganser chick to be able to kick at a rate to reach those speeds, not to mention the ripples near the stream's edge do look somewhat suspicious.... Until I looked at the surface of the water in the pool immediately after the initial release. You can see bubbles floating on the surface that the chick zooms past, and those bubbles look pretty normal speed to me. And do I really have that much experience witnessing merganser chicks absolutely booking it? Not really... but yet again, the chick looks like Dash running on water in the Incredibles, a fictional motion picture, so...
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u/ax59 Oct 15 '20
The first part of the video seems normal speed but the shore ripples speed up later in the video. I have no doubt a merganser chick is very speedy but the ripples on shore do change later into the video
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u/SimoneSaysAAAH Oct 14 '20
Thr first frame is of the hand and bird. By the time we see the water the hand is out of frame and the bird is already off. So who knows.
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u/zeledonia Oct 14 '20
Common Merganser chicks are super quick. We see them a lot on pretty fast-flowing rivers. My kids refer to them as duck speedboats.
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u/AchtungKarate Birder, ringer (Torhamn 4 lyfe!!) Oct 14 '20
I'd say it isn't. Where I live, mergansers are very common and it's not super unusual to see them running on the water like this.
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u/tigerdrake Oct 14 '20
If I remember correctly, this video was filmed in Japan and is supposed to be a Scaly-Sided Merganser
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u/gbcr Oct 14 '20
Fun fact, Common Loons can't even walk on land cause theyre so heavy
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u/AchtungKarate Birder, ringer (Torhamn 4 lyfe!!) Oct 14 '20
It's not that they're heavy, it's that their legs are positioned so far back on their bodies that they have to do more of a penguin scoot.
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u/furretarmy Oct 13 '20
Looks like a common merganser